GOdLeSs
by The Fifth Champion
Summary: AU. Once upon a time, Lord Death fell. Maka & co. grow up in a sinful world where morality does not exist, a ruthless gang called STAR terrorizes Death City, and shinigami are sold as precious dolls on a disturbed black market. Multiple pairings.
1. Prologue: ENTER a City of Corruption?

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Soul Eater. Atsushi Okubo does. Nor do I own the quotation from Neil Gaiman's _The Graveyard Book. _Neil Gaiman owns that, obviously.

**Author's Note: **Why, hello, . This whole experience is a little surreal/exciting/hazy for me, since where I am, it's approximately 5:30 in the morning, and because I have not submitted anything/truthfully written fanfiction since I was around sixteen (approximately four years ago?). There's a whole song and dance behind this – but I doubt you are interested in hearing it, if anyone is here at all (and if you are, you've probably skipped this message anyway xD). Suffice it to say, I wrote an original piece of fiction, which I _finally _finished, and since I'm in the process of editing it – I allowed myself to give into my weaknesses and indulge in some fanfiction (which I still heartily enjoy!) while I do so.

**Information You Might Actually Care About: **I'm banking on me being older and/or more mature to keeping myself dedicated to this piece of work. I have a lot of plans for it. Therefore, I'm planning on updating **every Sunday. **

In addition, there **will **be shipping in this fanfic, including **some love triangles**, but I'm not going to tell you in the summary, so you can deduct the relationships yourself! xD (they really aren't that difficult)

There will be **one** OC who will become a main character in the plotline, but she is **not** the major focus of the story. Indeed, she does not show up in this chapter.

Finally, although he/she does not appear in this chapter, Crona will play a huge part in this story. He/she will be depicted as **male!Crona** in this fanfiction because that's my personal preference/belief – please **respect** my opinion, **as I certainly respect all of yours **:)

Now, I **apologize** for bogging you down with this lengthy author's note – please **read** and **enjoy! **

**(and reviews are always appreciated!) **

**GoDlEsS **

"_It was a city that had been built just to be abandoned, in which all the fears and madnesses and revulsions of the creatures who built it were made into stone. The ghoul-folk had found it and delighted in it and called it home."_

Neil Gaiman, _The Graveyard Book_

"_I wish I'd been born in a godless world."_

_- _Franken Stein, _Soul Eater _(episode 23)

**Prologue: ENTER a City of Corruption? **

Death City was a venerable pit of nothingness.

No, strike that.

Death City was a riotous grotesquery. A seething, writhing, hissing, retching vat of filth and rancor and diseased bone. It was filled with the skulls of sad cracked dead things, and plagued with the chattering of strange, monkeylike fiends that – however unfortunate – had failed to yet perform their greatest act of selflessness and _die. _

Death City was a crowned Wasteland and a festering Hell.

She smiled grimly at the description, pleased. But then, not really pleased at all. It was a bittersweet sort of smile, subtle as the flowers dying on the grayed-out windowsill.

Something interrupted the fateful musings. A voice, tentative as eggshells:

"I'll be home late, Maka. Please… don't be angry with me."

The words were suspended as dust and dull spots of blood in the still, still air.

No matter how she watered them, they wilted – those flowers on the windowsill. Those damnable, dust-delicate irises, the purple of their petals like the ragged shawls of a fallen royalty; wispy brown stalks and dry, bitter feelings. Irises could not grow here, not in this place, not in this world.

"Maka…are you listening?" A desperate shuffle of feet, "Please, _please, _Maka. You know I love you –"

Oh why, oh why, did everything here _die? _

"Are you going to answer me? Maka – Maka? Papa loves you so much. Everything I do – you know I do it for you – don't you?"

Outside, the cobbled roads ran crooked, and they led only to places dark and unhealthful and blasphemous. The shadows rubbed themselves cheaply against your cheek, the wind keened its petty shrieks into your ear, and the ground beneath your feet was shifty and unstable, its fissures glistening with that telltale shine of RED.

She could smell the City's odor through the flung-open window, that venomous scent of decay. She choked on it. The evil breeze tasted like wormwood to her nostrils, the tainted air curdling to cottage-cheese disgust in her mouth.

The world outside was a precarious place: it was full of violent, unexpected ends.

No irises grew on those cobbled streets.

The voice again shattered the web of her thoughts:

"Maka – ! …_heh, _the silent treatment, huh? I guess I should have expected this. Kami – I mean, your mother – well, you're really just like her. So stubborn. Fine, fine, don't answer. I'll be late, but I promise to come home tonight. I swear to it. Papa loves you, after all."

The redhead's face was young, but careworn. Ripe with paternal affections.

He did not return home that night.


	2. WELCOME the Bloodstone Maka?

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Soul Eater. Atsushi Okubo does. Nor do I own the quotation from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death." That belongs to my friend Poe.

"_And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. _

_ And the flames of the tripod died. _

_ And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion _

_ over all."_

- Edgar Allan Poe, "The Masque of the Red Death"

**Chapter One: WELCOME the Bloodstone Maka? **

Maka Albarn was two years old when Lord Death fell.

Twelve years later, and she grew up in decay.

At least, this much she had come to learn, partly from her own deductions, partly from Papa's storytelling. And since there were no documentations, no recordings, no scriptures, no fairytales, frankly, _no books_ in this godforsaken graveyard of existence, she would have to trust his words – however reluctantly. After all, she had just been a little girl back then, sleepy-eyed and unaware, swaddled in a baby's fuzzy pink blankets (Papa had bought them, no doubt) when it happened.

What was single-handedly the most important event in her life – and she couldn't even remember it.

_Stupid Papa…Oh, 'I promise to come home tonight' – 'Papa loves you, after all' – yeah right. He's such a liar. Of course, he always cheated on Mama before the divorce, so why wouldn't he take on a job like _that_ once they finally separated?_

…_he probably stayed at that place all night…_

Maka kicked a stone into the shambles of a deserted house and a plague of rats squirmed out of its shadows, disturbed by the noise.

She huffed and walked on down the road.

Still, there was no reason for Papa to lie about Lord Death. Spirit Albarn, who whittled his years away in frivolous non-commitment, who indulged in sweet liquor and fast smiles, who glossed his talk in extra-shined promises that broke before they were even made – in all his falsehoods, Maka could tell Lord Death was his sole truth. All light dimmed from his artificial-bright eye, and the slyly smiling lips collapsed on themselves, into a furrow of lines. He became a cadaver of the (useless) man he was.

Lord Death had been a SHINIGAMI.

Which meant he had been a GOD.

And _this _meant, apparently, from what fragmentary information Maka managed to piece together, that he was a being unlike all others, that he was something Divine and Everlasting, a pristine and prominent Instrument in the overarching Order of Peace: his breath and bare hands conducted the symphonies of Life and elaborate curtain-calls of Death; he watched and guided the golden crisscrosses and interweaving dances of the Soul; he guarded the Doorway that Led to Another Place.

He dictated the Way of the World.

Papa would never tell her what he looked like, only that he had been very great and very tall, and his voice had been something whimsical – something laughing.

Morality existed back then.

Not like now. People no longer had consciences. Goodness was left to rot, spoiled in the vat of sin and ugliness that had become of the world. There was no such thing as rightness, no such thing as geniality or warmth or guilt or forgiveness. Murder stalked the streets on blood-dipped claws, disease slunk like sludge into every home, and darkness, vice, and theft seemed to shutter the sun.

"But it wasn't always like this?" Maka used to ask, quite young, before she knew of Papa's infidelities; she always asked on RED nights.

"Oh, no," Papa would respond, a sad wraith with a bloody-halo of hair, "At one point, before THE DEATH OF DEATH, almost everyone had a conscience – not just BLOODSTONES."

"Really?"

"_Haha – _yup, it's true. Well, that is…_most _people had some sort of understanding of right and wrong. There will always be those who choose the darker path, Maka. It's a sad thing about life. But there were others, too – people who were braver, kinder, stronger than all the rest. (People like _you, _Maka!) And still, back then, it was stranger for someone to have no morals at all… In fact, whole schools – (you remember what a school is, don't you?) – were erected to fight them.

These schools were set up for meisters and weapons. (You remember what a meister is, right?) Two people with…extraordinary abilities. They were taught to work together, to train together…they had to rely on one another, if you can believe that. _Trust _one another. If they were successful enough, they could even resonate – but that's too complicated to explain now. What's important is that they would battle evil and restore peace.

It was a beautiful time, Maka. It's not like now…without Lord Death…the whole world's gone topsy-turvy. I can't explain it – it's not normal. Something happened, that day…something went _wrong…_it might have been the Witches; some sort of dark magic. Because something got into the world…into people's heads…everything has been polluted."

As a small child, Maka had burrowed into her hill of pillows, eyes peeping round and breathless over her comforter as Papa recounted the story. The tale was sublime and phantasmic, yet fantastically so, a rich, vivid, colorful faeryland sewn in the sighs of nostalgia. Maka had wanted to touch it, the unfathomable dream of this dead world, had wanted to grasp it and envision it, but when she squeezed shut her enthused eyes, she saw only a haze of sunlight and honey-thick regret.

But wonder soon dissipated to disillusion. Papa's wistfulness was nothing but dust. The man had succumbed, however tragically, to this madhouse of a world around him. Sure, he spun fabulous fantasies, but Spirit Albarn was content to mourn and conform to this bitter new existence, this wretched cesspool of imitative life (for surely, the tiresome, bloody drag of days and nights they endured did not constitute as life – now, did it?).

No. He was just another somber, heavy-eyed, beaten-down BLOODSTONE, besotted by an untouchable past, willing only to daydream drunkenly and toil torturously through a cruel and pointless reality.

Papa was doing _nothing, nothing, nothing. _

"Does anyone in this world have the courage to do _anything?" _it was the inquiry that always ripped from her lips, but it remained forever unanswered.

Now Maka made her way through the tangled and confused streets of Death City. The (rotted) cupboards at home were filled with nothing but cobwebs, and as Papa was likely not to return until late afternoon, she took to rising early to shop amid the battered vendors. This was by no means a small feat, since most of the salespeople were keener on robbing or poisoning you than actually selling food, not to mention the multitude of pickpockets and other various criminals that littered the roads, even at this hour.

But Maka was quite accustomed to this environment. Since Papa was often – _working, _she learned to care for herself at a young and tender age. By seven years old, Maka was walking expertly down cracked and haunted lanes, gazing familiarly at fissures and spiders and ruin, avoiding dead bodies and the leering smile of the switchblade.

The trick was to appear attentive, unafraid, and entirely destitute (which dampened the temptation to mug or maim). In addition, it was also generally looked upon as rather clever to carry some sort of weapon or sharp-stinging pepper-spray (in case the aforementioned precaution failed to provide protection, as it so often did not).

Maka did both. She was in a particularly bad mood this morning, rankled as she was by Papa's shallow promises. She passed several corpses on the road as she traveled to the Death-Market Square, most of them frigid after spending a night leaking blood onto the cobbles. She alone had the decency to close their eyes before moving on. The thought was depressing.

"Hello, Madam Irves. I want three apples, please."

The wizened old lady behind the counter sneered her mossy teeth at her. Maka had been coming to Madam Irves' fruit stand for years. Her crop was gray and dried and sour, and her prices were always too steep, but Maka knew them to be safe. The madam was by no means a BLOODSTONE, but she was in desperate need of money, therefore she kept her stash at least faintly edible.

Maka slipped over a few rusted coins and received the brown-spotted apples, tucking them into a wicker-basket. She smiled at the woman, who returned the gesture by twitching her wasted lips into a pitiless frown. Maka sighed.

_Why do I even try? _

The streets were fairly empty this morning, given that most had collapsed after a night of crime. Maka suspected this particular mayhem to be due to STAR – a ruthless gang run by a murderous psychopath with spiky blue hair – but then, chaos had been existed before STAR, and it would certainly persist after the gang dispersed.

She slipped her basket into the crook of her arm and shoved her hands into the pockets of her coat. She had entered a narrow, crooked alley of sorts. The houses here crowded in weirdly, rickety, disheveled places with haphazard roofs, often slathered in graffiti. Maka noticed the brown crust of dried blood on a especially dilapidated home, streaked crudely in the forlorn five-point star that adorned so many massacres lately. She pursed her lips at it, the seed of resentment germinating like a weed in her heart.

_I can't stand this. All this pointless death…this murder. And I'm just supposed to accept it? I'm just supposed to say, 'Oh, that's sad' and be alright with how selfish people are? How violent? How _evil?_ I'm just supposed to say, 'Well, I only feel that way because I'm a BLOODSTONE' and wish I lived in a world that died? _

Maka stepped up slowly to the bloody star, her face haggard with misery. The shadows played like soft vipers on her cheeks, venomous and brooding. _There must be something I can do…there _has_ to be. _

Carefully, her hand touched the rough-hewn door the star was painted on. She could feel the wood beneath the thin white fabric of her gloves. She knew what lay beyond this entrance. She could imagine their forms, nameless victims, torn and mangled and RED-soaked. Maka did not cringe, but her face was sick and white and angry in the dark of the alley.

_I won't live in a world like this. _

The pads of her fingers dragged down STAR's insignia, chipping the dried blood.

_I refuse. _

And then something amazing happened.

Maka heard music.

It glided on supple notes through the ill-stained air, like invisible threads spinning about her in some bizarre cyclone, conjuring glorious pictures that stole her breath, entangling her in an eruption of feelings entirely foreign. Something bloomed in place of resentment in her heart, something pure and singing and resilient. She could not describe it. The music was like a faint voice, calling, calling. Its words were incomprehensible, but its sound was full of warmth and beauty and meanings that now lay inert beneath the sods of a grave.

_Who…could possibly be playing music? _

The notes fell with all the poetry of rose petals on her ears.

_Nobody plays music anymore. It's a dead art – dead as art itself. _

Numbly, she followed the drifting tendrils of sound, allowing it to guide her out of the decayed maze of houses, toward a hunched little establishment squatting at the edge of the street. Maka edged toward it suspiciously, the music entrapping her senses in a crystallized haze. The place was a bar. Its windows were soot-stained and dingy.

Maka pushed through the doors and plunged into a dim chaos.

The stench of alcohol assaulted her nostrils, reminding her unpleasantly of Papa. Shadowy shapes thrashed about in the gloom, their outlines denoting men of eclectic age and size, throwing sad and violent punches at one another. Tables were overturned, and a litter of beer bottles shone a decrepit green against the floorboards. An intoxicated woman bawled in a shabby corner, mucus running down her bruised nose, the ends of her shirt twisted in her emaciated hands.

The music hung over the environment like a vague glitter.

"Who – who's playing –?"

She saw him as the words left her lips. A bent, pale figure, wilted over an ancient piano, his hair a series of white tufts. He drew his fingers languidly over the stained keys of a piano, the RED hue of his eyes unreadable from this distance. The sight of him gave Maka a jolt. She did not know what she expected, but certainly it had not been this, a seemingly albino boy around the same age as her.

Maka headed through the dull-lit bar, undeterred by drunken slurs and demeaning jeers. But halfway through, she heard a shriek cut through the repulsive smoke of the place –

"_No_ – NO, STOP!"

Maka's eyes swiveled to the scene instantly: a young man was engaged in some sort of scuffle, and his opponent had him pinned to a table; there was the gray wink of a blade by his throat. The victim's was mussed in the RED of blood, drizzling in rivers from the nose and lips; Maka could see that his eyes, popping fearfully in the sweaty mask of his face, were puckered blue in bruises.

His scarlet mouth cracked open pathetically, spewing a motley collection of swearwords and pleading,

"You – you damn bastard! P – please, I – I'm gonna pay you back, I swear! I'm – I'm gonna – please, please – I don't wanna die; I don't wanna die; _I don't wanna die – please, please – f—ck you! Anyone, ANYONE, PLEASE, PLEASE – I DON'T WANNA DIE –!"_

I don't want to die, he said.

Anyone, anyone, please, he called, drowned in the throes of his own RED.

No one moved. No one looked. No one cared.

The piano continued to play, slow, slow, languid.

Maka felt a fire spark within her, burn a bitter wormwood taste in her mouth. Its flames blinded her eyesight, swallowed her heart in its roaring embers – and she charged at the man's attacker, her hand fisted so tightly that nail bit skin and met blood.

_Five-point stars on wooden doors, opening to dead bodies. _

_People lay motionless on the streets. _

_The vendor wouldn't smile. _

_ (And fathers who sell themselves) _

The human being wriggled like a tortured worm beneath the fisherman's knife.

"LET – HIM – GO –!"

Maka threw herself at the attacker – a fiend with a mass of dirty hair – too furious, too enraged to think of the pepper spray and little blade that lay securely beneath the groceries in her wicker basket (which had been abandoned, of course, during her senseless rush of pursuit).

All she knew was that every nerve in her body screamed in wild protest, that her mind pounded against the poison of this eternal immorality, that the person before her was sad and alone and broken and injured – _and she needed to do something, do anything – just anything – _

Several pairs of eyes turned to her in woozy bewilderment, but one hand stopped the cries from her mouth, pulled her sharply away.

The music ceased.

"What are you, crazy?" a voice snarled close to her ear.

Maka's palm was RED and wet. There was a cry and a splutter and more RED as the fiend's knife sliced a clean path across the young man's throat.

And Maka felt the fire dim to cold, meaningless ashes,

"Let go of me –" she choked back hatefully; she could not suck in enough air, her lungs were constrained in her chest – "I said, _let go of me." _The murder was impressed forever on her stricken eyeballs. Her mind was a small, dark, painful place.

"Idiot," the voice scoffed, and the hand loosened its grip on her elbow. Maka jerked her head roughly and her green eyes collided with the RED gaze of the pianist.

"You –!" She ripped herself from him, infuriated. "You stopped me! You let that man die!"

"People die all the time," the pianist retorted blandly, RED eyes apathetic on the RED of the room.

A few drunks blinked blearily at them. Maka, who had _not_ saved a man from murder, sensed chilly sweat clinging to the nape of her neck. She noticed the pianist's teeth, sharp and pointed, like a piranha.

She tried to rein her fury into a whisper, "And that's an _excuse?_"

But the pianist shrugged uselessly, "It is, it isn't – what does it matter? The point is, it happens, there's nothing we can do about it. You would have died if you did anything."

"_You don't know that –"_ a mottled murmur.

"You probably would have," and still, the RED of his eyes lingered dully over the RED of the bar, "What's the point of it all, anyway? You think that man deserved to be saved? He was probably just as bad as his murderer," his fingers tapped the dingy keys of his piano (he had yanked her toward it) and he sat down in a state of total resignation, "You should go home, BLOODSTONE."

The remnants of that fire sputtered. An empty ring of ashes, shuttered up in her soul, the bleak, endless, lingering disappointments and acid regrets of the people she did not save, of the world she could not cure. The bitterness instilled by those who did not care. Those who watched idly this macabre parade of sin. She could not again kindle that fire for justice, but instead experienced the biting ice of failure, the black deluge of indignation.

Here sat this boy, whose limp fingers created music, created life – and did he care nothing about the rot of humanity that infected his melodies? Could he simply sit here and play, mechanically, meaninglessly, while monsters rioted about him in a senseless thirst for blood and death and horror?

Had _he _truly been the reason she came here?

Had _he _truly created that music?

_This world…is broken. _

"Why do you play," she spoke through gritted teeth, "if you know no one listens?"

Apathetic fingers trailed pointlessly over the dead piano, "Heh. Why do you think? The cash."

But Maka Albarn had not waited for that answer. She collected her things, and left.

_Sell your songs to murder. _

You know, she had never truly understood music anyway.

**A/N: **I'm honored you read. I'd be ecstatic if you reviewed! :)


	3. COWER before the StarEyed Demon?

**Disclaimer:** I owe neither Soul Eater (Atsushi Ohkubo does!) or Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood (Hiroma Arakawa does!). Two amazing manga-artists who have thoroughly blessed my life.

**A/N: **First, I want to **thank my amazing reviewers:**

**AkiraWolfWriter888: **Your review (my first on in four years!) got me ecstatic! Thank you _so much – _especially for the comment on the descriptions!

**2random4words: **Your comment had me grinning ear to ear! I'm so excited that you're interested in seeing how the other characters will be incorporated into this story!

**SkaleFlapper15: **Your review had me blushing! I'm just glad people like you comment!

**FALCONPAWNCH: **Omg, you know, dystopia is such a good way to describe this story…and I didn't even realize it until after your review! I'm thrilled you want to see how the story works out!

**I hope all of you enjoy the next chapter! **xD

Okay, just some **minor things**: I didn't mention this last time, so I'm just going to say it quick now. The first three chapters are like "mock-episodes" of the first three episodes of the anime. You know, the first one introduces Maka, the next one introduces Black*Star – so, dun, dun, dun, you can expect Death the Kid to be in the next chapter! Felt the need to point it out.

Moving on – I know Black*Star is sort of – _uh_ – harsh here. For sure, this story plays with his **vices and weaknesses** (though of course he doesn't believe he has anyone :P), but it will most assuredly explore his **virtues and strengths** too. :)

Finally, I apologize if there are **any slight grammatical errors** in this. I reread it, but as it's almost 6 am where I am, I feel I've probably missed _something…_

**Please enjoy!**

"_Who tried to become something greater than God?" _

- Edward Elric, _Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood _(episode 26)

**Chapter Two: COWER before the Star-Eyed Demon? **

Mostly, he remembered the screams.

It was not something that bothered him; not really, not the sort of thing that crouched over dreams and rendered them blood. They were vague and noisy, those screams, like the irritating buzz of a wasp he couldn't quite swat – and they _dragged – _on and on and on – like a demented carousel ride, those screams circled and repeated and redoubled and returned – always the same: "PLEASE!" and "STOP!" and of course, "HELP, HELP, _HELP!" _and it was all very trite and all very boring and all very unsuitable for a star as big as him.

Black*Star flexed his fingers, powerful in their gauntlets.

_Heh. _So that's all murder really was, huh? Wasps and carousel rides and ennui. It was less than unimportant – it was _small. _

And there was no reason for him, immense as he was, profound as he was, _sublime as he was – _he, who was larger than the moon that grinned and oozed RED so stupidly above the filthy turrets of Death City! – there was no reason for him to waste precious moments on things as miniscule as his victims' screams.

It was simply…simply all he remembered the next day.

The bodies had been blood-speckled, a warped and wretched masquerade of quasi-human things.

Black*Star squatted low on his haunches, balanced on the besmeared windowsill; the world below him was hot and ruined under the drooling blaze of the sun, and it was small too, a pitiful collection of dirty, shambling homes, piled up hopelessly on one another, supplemented by nothing more than a maze of crooked, bleeding walkways. And the people who swarmed aimlessly about them, like insects that crawl from gore-clotted gutters, they were insignificant too – weak, pathetic, fleshly objects, beneath him.

And Black*Star knew that someday – _someday soon – _Death City would bow its crumbling weight to him. This, indeed, was fact.

He knew this, because he knew he was superior. He was the best. He was _big. _And given that the city measured bigness in the context of skulls, blood, and corpses, Black*Star naturally understood that he had to stand on the tallest mound of cadavers. And he did. Power was steeped in murder, and Black*Star surrounded himself in a graveyard of victims, all who fell prostrate at the stars in his eyes – he drenched his hands in the RED of others.

He would transcend…he would transcend…_something. _

_After all, the GODS are already gone. _

Or maybe they never existed at all.

It was mildly disappointing, if only because he could not prove how superior he was to them.

_Oh well. Soon, all of Death City is gonna know what it means to fear STAR – and who's at the center of STAR? _

Black*Star _was_ STAR. The others were rabble, worshippers and followers, those who longed to imitate (however vaguely) his immensity. Something like a grin contorted at Black*Star's mouth, and his hard jade eyes sought the decrepit town beneath him with all the bloodlust of a serial killer.

A particular sight caught his gaze. Even from faraway, he could see her: a willowy girl with no figure whatsoever, her ash-blonde hair drooping about her face in ridiculous pigtails. She was tiny as an ant, but Black*Star could not help noticing the way she held herself, with defiant disregard to the world around her. She stood in front of a haunt STAR infiltrated just yesterday (none were left alive), her hand pressed roughly against his bloody insignia. Slowly, slowly, Black*Star watched as she drew her minute fingers over the RED-painted star, chipping at its prominence.

Fury awoke like a storm within him; a haze of crimson blinded him: who was she, worthless, useless, powerless, boneless worm, to defile _his_ symbol? The mark of _his _greatness! She, who would certainly quail at his strength; who deserved no better than to grovel at the dirt that touched his feet – !

The dumb _bitch, he would slaughter her – _

"Yo."

Black*Star stood up, his form just fitting the length of the window (STAR had dismantled and removed its panes) with all the intentions of a demon, but the familiar voice momentarily stilled him.

"What do you want?" his voice was low and distracted, snarling.

The person leaned back against a peeling, dirt-streaked wall, the discordant hair visible even in Black*Star's peripheral vision.

"STAR's ready. Waiting for your orders," the words stopped when a bottle met the lips that spoke them.

_And she's already drinking, _"Good," Black*Star turned, so that his cold eyes were fixed fully upon her. He was not so worried about the alcohol; he knew the girl held her liquor well, but the omnipresent bottles grew a little irksome at times. "Quit with the booze, April," he hated to think that anyone would choose cheap beer over his leadership, "I want my right-hand man sober for this mission."

There was a _crack _as April threw the bottle against the decaying wall. It rained down in a dozen glass shards, all winking deceptively in the harsh sunlight, like jagged teeth. The girl seemed bitter to let it go, but her mismatched eyes stayed focused on Black*Star while she did so.

"You know I don't get f—cking drunk easy," she said. The profanity did not indicate insult. April was infamous for puncturing her language with swearwords in places where they truly did not belong.

Black*Star grunted and shifted his gaze back to the wastes of Death City, "Talk like that again and I just might slit your throat."

April Aislinn.

It was a funny sort of name, unfitting for a member of STAR. Girly. And this was ironic, since the person standing there, watching him from the doorway, possessed no feminine traits whatsoever. If she had any shape that resembled a woman, the huge, baggy clothes she wore swallowed it up entirely. The little iron spikes that jutted from her left eyebrow seemed decidedly boyish, echoing the orange-colored spikes that dominated the left side of her head. Even the right side of her scalp, covered in thick green hair, was pulled back in a ponytail sloppy enough to reject femininity. She looked somewhat like a faintly androgynous boy, forever scowling.

So it was funny that her name was April. Black*Star had met her years ago, wandering forlorn and barefoot through Death City's cobbled roads; her body had been small and white and bruised, and her youthful face scarlet with lacerations. She was pick-pocketing from a nearby vendor, pencil-thin fingers plucking at a few shriveled grapes.

Black*Star – who had been small and white and somewhat bruised himself – confronted her, informed her of his plans to murder her.

She had looked at him, with eyes as vacant as a pilfered coffin, and said, "Try it, then."

Her face was dry and expressionless and full of endurance. And he had thought such endurance might be useful.

Not that she was anywhere near his greatness. His mere shadow could envelop her entire being, the smallest sigh he breathed was enough to shatter her entirely – no, he was superior to _all_ people – he towered above _all_, a bloodstained titan in a GODLESS world – and he certainly, certainly did not _need _her in any sort of way. It was only that her endurance might serve a function: she could possibly complete those trivial jobs necessary to achieve STAR's rightful dominance, but were too pitifully small and painfully insignificant for Black*Star to perform himself. After all, he refused to lower himself to menial tasks.

Yes. That was where people like April came in. It had nothing to do with sympathy at all.

She was looking at him that way now – that same level, blank, jaded look in her gaze, _Try it, then. Gimme what you got. I'll take it. I'll endure it. I don't fall without a fight. _

_And you would die, _the thought ripped through Black*Star's mind with all the violence of a raving wolf, _I'd murder you in ten seconds flat. I wouldn't hesitate, I wouldn't doubt. You'd be dead before you raised your fist._

But April would not challenge him. Black*Star knew this. Over the years, she had proved herself to be committed fully to STAR – and he _was_ STAR. Her every word, deed and gesture conveyed a steadfast and straightforward loyalty to the gang; the trait was almost repugnantly like a BLOODSTONE, but it was practical, so Black*Star allowed her to express it. The important thing was that she understood his infinite bigness.

However, the notion of challenges reminded him sharply of something.

"_Damn it!" _

His eyes swiveled to the spot, but the girl with pigtails was gone.

"_DAMN IT!" _his powerful arm swung out furiously, colliding with the side of the window in an explosion of dust and debris; the stone crumpled instantly upon contact, "_WHERE THE HELL DID SHE GO?"_

April nearly jolted, her brooding expression shocked into one of concern, "Whoa – what the f—ck, Black*Star? What the f—ck are you talking about?"

But Black*Star did not even hear her: there was a whirlwind in his mind, a roaring indignation that absorbed all thought in a massive hurricane of bloodlust. He could think only of that girl, lolling dead and skinny beneath his freshly painted insignia, dripping slippery and sweet in her blood. He could feel the warm gush of RED on his palms, see the profound fear dawn in her unimportant eyes before she collapsed, like an unstrung puppet, before his unforeseen murder. He would snap her frail little neck, stop her irritatingly beating heart – her screams would be like symphony – he would kill her, _kill her – _

He bent himself over the sill, determined to launch himself into the now-late-morning air, to find his victim –

"Yo – _BLACK*STAR! _What? You want me to tell the f—cking troops to call off today?"

That rooted him in his spot; he reeled on her, his glare like a blade,

"Of course not. What are you, stupid?"

"Well, where the f—ck are you going?"

His mouth stung bitter as nightshade, "To find some bitch that wrecked my mark."

Black*Star could not read her expression. April's face was always waxy and pale, blanched beneath the ill-assorted freckles that bunched under her left eye. Those eyes themselves, mismatched colors, one a sharp blue, the other a sullen pink (as if in defiance to her boyish wardrobe), were eternally ringed in a reddish hue that denoted lack of sleep. Thus, the gray shadow that threw itself across her features was not at all questionable.

"Do you know who she is?"

"What does it matter? I'm still gonna slaughter her."

A momentary pause, as if she was weighing her response, "…she could be anywhere in this f—cking city. It'll take all damn day to find her. Do you want me to call off the –"

"_NO!" _Black*Star growled, though he cast another frustrated punch at a nearby wall; once again, a cloud of dust and stone and plaster rose up, dissipating to reveal a gaping crater, "You really are an idiot, aren't you, April? There's no way STAR's calling it off – the ENCHANTED SWORD is gonna be mine. I'll murder the girl later, when she least expects it. Honestly, you think I'll throw away the most powerful weapon ever for one small girl? I'm too big for that. I could kill that stupid bitch while I'm sleeping."

And he stormed out of the room in a blaze of RED glory.

The pillage did not end until the moon spread its bloodstained grin across the sky.

Black*Star stood amid the wreckage, staring out with hard green eyes at the litter of broken china that dusted the floor, glittering dully over a mussed rug. The cabinets had been desecrated, plundered of all items, either stolen or left to rot on a pockmarked counter. The furniture was both ruined and overturned; the windows broken, the draperies torn; the pale walls slashed. The night air flew chill and biting through the pitiful home's entrance (the door ripped crooked on its hinges), shrieking like some horrific wraith; moonlight flooded the threshold, sickly yellow in shadows.

And in the middle of the room, a tall, graceful figure knelt shaking on the ground, arms bound, the ebony hair awash over her hung face.

"I'm going to ask you one more time, BLOODSTONE," he had his back turned to her, but his voice cut like razors through the dark, "Where is the ENCHANTED SWORD?"

There was a desperate, muffled sob, and the girl peeked sorrowful dark eyes at him betwixt the ropey black locks, "P-please, I – I don't….I don't kn-kn-know wh-where Ma-Masamune i-i-is…"

"_Liar,"_ he breathed it, and when he swung his poisonous gaze around, there were stars in his eyes, "_Tell – me – WHERE – HE – IS!" _

April stood like a gaunt gray sentinel in the corner of the room, her jaded look fixed ahead. The rest of STAR looted.

"I – I d – don't – _know!" _The girl gasped, struggling upward before she wilted back onto her knees, burdened by the array of bruises that mottled her fair flesh. Tears tangled the lashes of her eyes, but her mouth was an almost angry thing, defiant in its ultimate wretchedness. "M – My father to-took him a-a-way a – a few d-days a-ago –"

"AND YOU KNOW WHERE THEY ARE!"

Black*Star whirled on her, wrenching at a fistful of sleek, shining hair, his voice ragged and insidious as a python, coiling murderous and rough-scaled about her eardrums, "I know you're just trying to protect them, BLOODSTONE. Tell me and your death will be less painful."

The tears fell glimmeringly to the floor, like diluted jewels, "P-please…you…you _must_ have some sort of _m-mercy_…s-some sort of – of h-h-humanity…_p-please_…"

The fingernails drove into her scalp, invited the stain of RED –

"_Tell – me – NOW."_

The scream must have stabbed like a knife, so close was it to her ear, but still the girl did not speak. The dim eyes oozed, the weakened limbs shuddered, the bruised mouth twisted in despair, but not one word plucked itself from those reluctant lips.

She had put up a bit of a resistance, this one, when STAR first invaded. She was a weapon, a fairly interesting one, but she was not the ENCHANTED SWORD, and he got her in the end – the way he got everyone. He was Black*Star. He never lost.

He would _not_ lose now.

A tremor wracked the elegant form, and with a heave of violent breath, the BLOODSTONE threw her blurred gaze away from him, so that the ends of her long, long hair whipped against his face. But, no, it was not hair – a linked chain, cold and rattling – bumped rudely against his chin.

"_G – GET – AWAY –!" _

Did she dare…_did she DARE…?_

The stars flared once more in his eyes, eating at the green of his irises, warping his stare into the hellish contours of a demon. Within less than a second, his hand crushed her windpipe, and the smile that cracked his mouth was damned and bloodlusting, nearly soulless – _and did she DARE try to humiliate him? – _his bloody fingernails scrabbled at the pearly-white throat, the thudding pulse, so weak, so weak, fluttering – _and did she DARE try to challenge him? – _and he could feel the stars, burning, burning, into the retina of his eyes, permanent, instilling his blood with liquid fire; with molten power – _and did she DARE? did she DARE? did she DARE? – _"I'll SLAUGHTER you…"

Black*Star felt for his soul – the thing he seemingly did not possess, not to his victims – and he knew how to channel it, through his brain, through his skin, through his fingers – he knew how to make her suffer –

April rose suddenly, perhaps out of meditation.

"Yo – Black*Star – I just realized something. This girl, she's a DARK ARM –"

The voice was an inconsistent buzz to the scream of murder in his eardrums:

"I don't need a weapon that's only _second-best_ –"

"The DARK ARM has multiple forms! If she absorbs the ENCHANTED SWORD, you'll have _more_ than one weapon –"

Black*Star reined himself back, his mind and body lurching as he coerced the insurmountable bloodlust inward, all on the promise of power; he fixed his gaze murderously on the weapon, heaving through clenched teeth.

"Is this true?"

The crouched finger was princess-like, frail and mourning; she was like an uprooted blossom.

She only wept.

"I'm sure…" April murmured, a whisper caught and tossed playfully by the shrieking wind.

Black*Star appraised the shivering flower that was the BLOODSTONE, his expression steady, steady, deadly. So, she could be useful, this girl. Useful, like April; like all the others… Tools for his glory.

"Weapon. What's your name?"

She sucked a bitter breath, surveyed him despairingly through drowned violet eyes.

"…T-Tsubaki…" it was the response of a defeated flower.

"Fine. You're mine now. April, round up the others. Take the weapon with us."

It was only when he was over the threshold, beneath the moon that was so much smaller than he – grinning stupidly and bloodily over the turrets of Death City – that Black*Star wondered why he bothered to ask for her name.

**A/N:** Haha, this was written almost entirely to Black*Star's theme song, btw… Once again, I'd be enthralled if you reviewed!


	4. ADORE the Pretty Lifeless Doll?

**Disclaimer:** I own neither _Soul Eater_, which is owned by Atsushi Ohkubo, or _Weaveworld, _which is owned by Clive Barker.

**A/N: **I **apologize **in advance for the crappiness that this chapter. Death the Kid is one of my favorite characters and I have a lot planned for his role/position in this story – but I don't feel this chapter is up to either DTK's standards or the standards I wanted it to be at. **Due to school**, I sandwiched a lot of this (basically, all) onto Saturday night, and that's why it's so – short and unappetizing and – _**not worthy.**_

But I **needed** to make sure I kept my Sunday-updating promise, so here it is!

**Now, to** **thank my wonderful reviewers: **

**Mars Death: **I feel so honored that you think I keep them in character! I'm trying _very _hard! I hope chapter three isn't a total letdown for you!

**2randomforwords: **Once again, you make me blush. I'm sooo honored you thought I kept Black*Star in character and I'm beyond happy you liked Tsubaki's entrance!

**AkiraWolfWriter888: **You always make me gush with happiness. Your enthusiasm makes me want to write more – and I'm thrilled you liked Tsubaki that much! Like I told SkaleFlapper15, I'm just glad people like you comment.

**Glider383: **Omg, you really waited? I feel sooo honored! I really, really appreciate your interest in this story; it helps move it forward! I hope you like this chapter!

**Dimples:** Thanks so much! I'm so happy you think its deep xD

**GrossGir18:** I know! : (

**Van the Key of Lain:** I'm so honored/amazed that you gave such a lovely review. I'm thrilled you mentioned "dark horror," since I am sort of going for that. I'm also honored you find the introductions credible. Hopefully this one doesn't make you revoke that.

**SkaleFlapper15:** OMG. Thank you SO MUCH! I'm sooo damn honored that you like April! She's sort of a co-creation between my sister and me, who both love Soul Eater. We spend a lot of time discussing her characterization and how she would interact with the canon characters, so it's amazing to hear another SE fan say something about her.

**TheSilverbloodAlchemist: **I'm so thrilled you like my writing style and the story – I hope you enjoy this chapter!

**Appleblx:** Haha, April is an amazing name! And wow, thanks! I hope it was worth skipping the hwk :P

**Other notes: **Unfortunately, once again, it's really late so there are probably **minor grammar errors **in this. Please forgive them, since I'm running off of severe lack of sleep.

Finally, the chapter should explain this – I hope it does – but I'm putting it here for reference anyway: **the italics at the beginning of the story are all in DTK's head and/or a flashback. He's basically just thinking about stuff in between bits of outside dialogue he's not paying attention to. **

Now, without further adieu, I hope you enjoy:

"_Thus the pagan will be sanctified, the tragic become laughable; great lovers will stoop to sentiment, and demons dwindle to clockwork toys."_

Clive Barker, _Weaveworld_

**Chapter Three: ADORE the Pretty Lifeless Doll? **

"And, as you can see, the eyes are of purest –"

_He was…DEAD. _

_ Or…no….he was…_

_ …DEATH? _

_ What is 'DEATH?'_

"The skin is pristine. Look how glossy it is! White as snow –"

_DEAD, DEAD, DEAD, mocked a symphony of grinning skulls; and then he woke up. _

_Wait. _

_Stop. _

_Rewind. _

_Go back. _

_Back, back, back, to the last time – _

"Yes, yes, the hair _is _lovely, black as pitch. _Haha, _yeah, a regular Snow White. (No, I don't know what the stripes mean) – "

_ "You're so pretty, dolly," the voice and the face that accompanied it floated from the oblivion of his memories, precise and exact; it was little Miss Tara, in her sweet taffeta dress, holding up the patterned teapot with the look of the devil, "You're so pretty – would you like some tea, dolly?" _

"I guarantee you: it's a hundred percent pureblooded –"

_ He did not respond. The teapot was old, somewhat cracked and faded; everything in this world was – even those clever enough to use their sins to amass an ill-founded and bloodstained wealth – even they could not collect things that were perfectly beautiful, not in this world, barren, damned, desecrated – unbalanced. _

_ But the design on the teapot was symmetrical: two roses, intertwining, thorns and RED petals. The same on both side, they mirrored one another. Even. Precise. Exact. Symmetry, symmetry. Look at it. Focus on it. Breathe it. Live for it. _

_ Symmetry, symmetry._

"It's really rare. The son itself, I tell you. The _son – _plucked right out of the crib – _haha –"_

_Little Miss Tara, she was the daughter of a previous OWNER. Surveying him over the flowered top of the teapot, and she had a demon's eyes, livid blue, and sharp, preening, wicked smiles, peeking suspiciously from rosebud lips; she's a charming torturer, really._

"_Would you like – oops!" She tipped the spout, small fingers dexterous and sturdy, so that a rose-scented stream of very real, very wet, and very hot liquid sloshed purposely into his lap – scalding, but still, he did not scream. The heat clawed at him, burning RED talons, but his teeth only hardened against the pain. And still little Tara smiled: "It looks like you got tea all over you. Shame on you, silly dolly." _

"See how elegantly its body is shaped?"

_He was a mess – a mess – a MESS –! _

_He wanted to die – to die – to DIE –! _

_But he could not; he could not move. He was a doll, an expensive thing chained up lovingly, drooping over the elaborately-set table. The glazed golden eyes rolled languidly and despairingly, back and forth, back and forth, but this was all. He was barricaded by the stitched, spongy smiles of stuffed animals, and of course the other dolls, chalk-white, with real human hair, and glass eyes, watching him. Plastic faces. He supposed he looked like those dolls, plastic and unmoving. _

"Do you see how even its teeth are?"

_What is a 'SHINIGAMI?'_

_ He was a doll at a little girl's tea-party. _

_Little Miss Tara ran pudgy, possessive fingers through his hair, black, black – what did the salesperson say about his hair? Black as pitch? Something about Snow White. _

_ "You look sooo pretty in your new dress, dolly. You're sooo wonderful! You're my favorite – just like a real boy! I love you, dolly!" She threw petite, chubby, perfectly rounded arms around him, slathered his dusky white cheek in cold, cold kisses, full of selfishness. _

_And later, she would slap him, while his OWNER wasn't looking. She would drive the flat, conniving, child-nails down the left side of his face, drawing rich, cherry RED from moonlight pallor, and all tied up, he would only be able to plead, to beg, to grovel at her fits of laughter – please, please, hit the other side – just please, make it symmetrical – _

_Now, she kissed him. Her dolly. _

_ Just like a real boy._

_ In a dress. _

"How much? Well, as you can imagine, quite a bit –"

_He supposed, dully, that this should be mortifying. A burning badge of true lowliness, pure shame, in the form of a velvet-ebony dress, enveloping his body. All pugnacious bows and sickly ribbons and laughably frilly skirts. On the orders of a small child, the butlers had trussed him up like a girl and deposited him here, amid blank-eyed, emptily smiling toys. _

_He did not think on it. What was the point? He was a thing, an object; lovely, lovely, useless. _

_And the tea-set was arranged so wonderfully. Each cup like a lotus flower, delicately placed, in a perfect circle; the napkins neatly folded, and the identical sugar and milk bowl, reflecting one another, exact balance; and the teapot in the very center of the table, like a fat matriarch. _

_Symmetry, symmetry – such lovely, lovely symmetry. _

_What did it matter, if he were in a dress? What did it matter, when there was this perfect symmetry? What did this life matter? What did his pain matter? _

_What did his identity matter? _

_(butthiswholeworldisunbalanced)_

"Name your bid; I'll see if it's in the price range…"

_What is a 'SHINIGAMI?'_

_When his OWNER came in, mother of the girl, full of her daughter's selfsame supremacy, little Miss Tara was scolded. The doll was a COLLECTOR'S ITEM, a grownup's toy, rare and delicate and finely-crafted, and it was not to be touched, not to be touched, not to be touched – not by the smudged, piggy little hands of filthy, thieving children – _

_And amid her mother's words, the small child screeched, like the yowl of a murdered cat: _

"_I KNOW WHAT A SHINIGAMI IS! I KNOW WHAT A SHINGAMI IS! A SHINIGAMI ISA DOLL THAT BREATHES AND MOVES AND TALKS! A SHINIGAMI IS A DOLL THAT BREATHES AND MOVES AND TALKS! A SHINIGAMI IS – A SHINIGAMI IS –"_

_A DOLL!_

_A DOLL! _

_A DOLL! _

Death the Kid was a doll.

* * *

Death the Kid opened sunrise-gold eyes to the BLACK MARKET.

He had been lost, wandering adrift in the unpleasant shores of recent memory, all while the seller pitched his unwholesome sale. He merely sat there, still and desolate, on the threadbare chair, limp arms and hanging legs chained to steel limbs with airy grace. He sat there, drenched in waking nightmares of Lady Monica and little Miss Tara, his time with them riddled with sneers and smirks and cruel needle words and the slash of sharp fingernails, all until the moment of their untimely murders and his expected return to the marketplace.

And here he was again, in this lowly, dripping, dank, filth-infested underground place, where the sellers' harks rushed about the moist environment like the scurries of frenetic rats, desperate to reach the ears of potential buyers. Death the Kid loathed the area, its grime-coated, black-streaked walls, its rickety stage, the spun cobwebs, the dirty, gnarled hands of his seller, turning his jaw this way and that.

The BLACK MARKET was asymmetrical; horrendously asymmetrical. Nausea clotted in his throat, revulsion clouded his eyes, and a blind sense of panic blackened his mind to a small, dark, and cramped cavern of horror. He screamed about it; wept about it; vomited about it – but the cries of a doll are unheard, and shriek as fading wraiths in the ugly air, left to shrivel and writhe and die unnoticed.

So he sunk himself in the bitter molasses of unforgotten remembrance.

Death the Kid sat still, DEAD, and pretty, vacant as a doll.

The (disgusting) nails of his seller, cracked and wretchedly yellowed, clutched a violating hold of his chin, tilting it roughly toward a customer. This was distasteful, but Death the Kid was accustomed to the treatment: for as long as he could remember, he was shunted down these hellish underground tunnels to sludgy brown chambers, decked out in fine clothes and thrown onstage, the pretty object for lustful criminal-buyers to ogle and bid on.

This particular buyer was a tall, lean man with a fairly muscular build, his skin mocha-colored and his eyes curious beneath the rim of his hat. He was clothed in a long, shadowy overcoat, and accompanied by an effeminate boy with a cloud of wavy, slick black locks. Death the Kid avoided looking at it, his brilliant gaze unfocused. The olive-skinned man had dual hoops dangling from one side of his hat; only one side. It revolted him.

"And you're sure it's a legitimate SHINIGAMI?" he remarked, a familiar flame of greed in his eye.

"Oh, yes –" the seller supplied, dripping greasily in his own variation of greed, "Very expensive – one of a kind, like I told you. The son of Lord Death."

The description kindled the flame in the customer's eye, an incandescent glow of something beyond ordinary greed – something unfathomable, the perilous trenches of some want that ran deeper than the blood of the murdered, the murkiness of a polluted ocean, the chills given by the RED-grinning moon.

Death the Kid noticed it, but he did not have the energy, or the willpower, to gather up the dregs of his soul and feel worried. He was simply a doll, lolling lifeless and useless, pretty and vacant, still, still, DEAD.

_What is a 'SHINIGAMI?'_

"It is – lovely…" the customer murmured in a low breath, and circumventing the seller entirely, he moved toward the precious plaything, skimming his fingers lightly over the uncolored cheek, the smooth throat, the apathetic lips. Death the Kid was possessed by another vague ghost of alarm: those fingertips, as customary as he was to being prodded and stroked, seemed especially wrong, pulsed with an aberrant lust that was almost violating; insurmountable desire. "I don't think…" the voice drifted, potent with a whispered, dark-tinged fancy, "I don't think…I've ever wanted so badly…as this lovely thing, here…"

The words were more phantoms, brushing uncouthly at his eardrums, startlingly disturbed. Death the Kid sat there, chained, unresponsive, while the bothersome hand crept up his marble-blank expression; and dolls did not control their own fate.

And – what _is _a 'SHINIGAMI?'

His golden eyes drifted, noticed the other boy, the one with the black curls. He looked distinctly disgruntled, the mouth upturned in the oddest of frowns. Well, at least it looked symmetrical, from here.

The seller was also ruffled by the customer's audacity in touching his merchandise: the tenors of irritation wove throughout his next words, "I see. Well. Mr. –"

"Noah," the buyer cut in, his hand still floating insidiously near Death the Kid's unfeeling mouth.

"….Mr. Noah. You'll need _quite_ a bit of cash for this one here. Lady Monica, the last OWNER, paid a hefty price, and you'll need to up her bid –"

Noah blurted a price that made the seller gasp and stumble, reeling back in some dazzling galaxy of wildest, immeasurable profit.

"I – of course – _sir,_" all sourness sweetened in the sudden approach of this mythical wealth, "I – I – well, of course, whatever you like, naturally, naturally. I am sure the SHINIGAMI will be to your liking. It's quiet, so docile; you don't even need to drug it –"

Noah' eyes haunted over his new possession, a morbid nightmare, as avid and untold as a ghost that lingers without any known reason; only the faint traces of an incoherent malice. Death the Kid was languid to his touch, inwardly screaming.

"I still want it."

"Sir?"

"I still want some SKULL-HAND, the drug that makes SHINIGAMI sleep. Give me some. It doesn't matter how much."

"Sir! I – I assure you – it's not necessary –"

"Just in case," Noah breathed, and there was something very definite and very final and very _wrong _about the way he touched his chin, the blazing light that poured from malevolent eyes, "It's mine now. All mine."

And, not for the first time, the world closed up around Death the Kid. A grim, bleak, unsmiling place, with mud on the horizon, and an eternal moon cracked and grinning at his unfelt torment: for, Death the Kid could not bring himself to feel, not really, even when they slipped the rope around his neck, jerked him up, and he began to stagger, then walk smoothly, like an obedient little doll whose key winds slowly in its back, driving him forward – step, step, step – the march for the soulless, for the plastic, the porcelain, the prettiest and most useless thing –

_What is a 'SHINIGAMI?' _

The doll fell aimlessly through the abyss of non-identity:

_Really…I have no idea. _


	5. WHO is the Mad Scientist's Patient?

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Soul Eater. Atsushi Okubo does. And I do not own Disney's _Hunchback of Notre Dame. _Disney does. Obviously. xD

**A/N: **Okay…so…**technically speaking**, this is **not late** because it's still **Sunday. **However, I know I usually update r**eally **early Sunday morning (more like Saturday night, lol) and thus because I waited until **Sunday evening** to put this up – I feel incredibly late : (

The reason it happened is this: usually I spend **all Saturday night** writing as much as I possibly can, finishing up around – um – five/six A.M? ^^; And putting it on then. However, between rushing around studying and writing, and not really eating or sleeping enough, I actually forced by body to shut down: i.e, I fainted on a bus. ^^;

Thus, I need to sleep more – so I'll be functionally able to write – and I had to finish this up on Sunday morning (which trickled down into Sunday afternoon) before uploading it. I'm sorry that I'm preloading you guys with all useless information, though. What's really important is this –

**Ideally, I'd like Godless to be uploaded early Sunday morning, but if it's not, that does NOT mean it's not gonna show up at all. It will be uploaded **_**at some point during the day. **_

If ever something happens and I can't, **I will try to PM you guys** about why I can't upload on a given Sunday. Not because I think you all have nothing else to do (I'm sure you all have busy, interesting lives xD), but so you all don't start judging my **promises as empty** and assume I've decided to **go dead on again**. :P

In other news, to make up for the pseudo-lateness of this chapter: hooray! Its **ten pages** long! Nearly double the amount of Kid's pitiful chapter! (I'm still upset about that; DTK is one of my _**favorite**_** characters** and I was really excited about introducing him…and I feel the whole chapter was rushed and – just not good…)

* * *

Now, to **thank** my **lovely reviewers: **

**GrossGirl18: **Yes, yes it is. ^^;;; And unfortunately it gets worse…

**AkiraWolfWriter888: **You are the one that's amazing! I'm so happy you're enjoying it this much and that you find it original. I'm excited for Liz and Patty to show up as well! (next chapter, btw) And honestly, don't sweat about the updating thing – this is the **first fanfiction **that I've **ever** tried to be loyal about updating. I used to leave fanfics up for months before updating – and then sometimes I'd just stop altogether…it was pitiful. Anyway, I still feel like this one is hours too late :/

**Van the Key of Lain: **I always love your reviews, they are so detailed! I'm really blushing that you liked the way I handled DTK's disorder (OCD? Symmetry-obsession? Haha) since all while writing it I felt frustrated, like it wasn't coming out clear enough. And woot! I'm so glad you abhor Noah! I was really trying to make him as creepy as can be.

**Mars Death: ***blush* Omg, your words mean so much, especially since I wasn't really satisfied with this chapter. More than you were expecting? I'm honored! And thanks so much – I'm so glad Noah/Gopher fit. I always thought they were interesting (Noah) and fun (Gopher) villains, so I had to incorporate them somehow…and Noah just makes a perfect owner, so…

**Kitori-xxx: **Thank you** SO **much for reviewing every chapter! You're really amazing and your comments really mean a lot to me! xD Haha, yup, that would be Gopher – I know he didn't do much last chapter, but he's certainly gonna play a large role, so I'm glad you noticed! xD Yes, he's incredibly amusing. Poor Kiddo 3 And about the pairings (which you asked in your review of Chap 1) I wanna keep them a **surprise** (although they're pretty obvious **/HINT, HINT/**) so you'll have to guess for now! xD

**2random4words: **Thanks so much for saying Kid was in character and that Noah fit well! I'm honored! As for Liz and Patty, I know, and I'm sorry. It' makes sense you would expect them to show up, since Maka meets Soul in the first chapter and Black*Star meets Tsubaki in the next chapter (all meisters seem to find their weapons). However, DTK is in a special situation – (probably the worst) – and I have plans that once he meets the Thompson sisters, its gonna trigger a big shift in the story/plotline, and at chapter three it was **way** too early for that to happen – thus they couldn't make an appearance yet. However, they a**re** gonna show up **next chapter.**

**SkaleFlapper15: **Did I mention that **you're** awesome? I'm so thrilled your reading this story; you're an amazing reader and commenter!

**Dimples: **Wow –I'm so excited that I've hooked your interest! I hope this chapter was worth the wait! I know it doesn't follow up on DTK, but the subsequent chapters definitely will.

* * *

Okay, now, finally: Once again, just for **safekeeping:** Crona makes an appearance in this chapter and I've characterized him/her as **male!Crona.** Please, in case you did not see my initial note about this (I wouldn't blame you: my author's notes are obnoxiously too long) do not write in a review that I've made a mistake and that Crona's actually genderless/asexual/a girl/female, etc. I've made a conscious decision to classify him/her as a boy here. **I value your opinion, please value mine. : ) **

Last note (I'm sorry for all this): **LIZ AND PATTY WILL MAKE AN APPEARANCE NEXT CHAPTER. THEY ARE CENTRAL CHARACTERS IN THIS STORY AND WILL PLAY SIGNIFICANT ROLES. I'M NOT TRYING TO SWEEP THEM UNDER THE RUG IN ANY SORT OF WAY. THEY JUST HAVE TO BE IN A SPECIFIC PLACE AT SPECIFIC TIMES, AND THUS I HAD TO HOLD OFF ON THEM A LITTLE BIT.**

Sorry for that – but I just want to make it clear that I'm **not** just letting the Thompson sisters' drown in DTK's shadow (which I know can happen sometimes).

Okay – now – finally – now that this obnoxious author's note that I'm sure you've all skipped it out of the way: **please enjoy! **

**

* * *

**"_Remember what I taught you, Quasimodo: You are deformed."_

Frollo, _The Hunchback of Notre Dame _(Disney)

**Chapter Four: WHO is the Mad Scientist's Mysterious Patient? **

For the next few days, her mind was haunted by the perpetual ghost of RED.

The hue came in two variations: the RED of a dead man's throat, split and sputtering, _slick, _a shining scarlet, dripping with slow-slow tenacity down the smiling skin, and the RED of the pianist's eyes.

Maka lay long hours in the still, cool, whispering sanctum that was her room, surrounded by sheets and shadows, and those few precious books she managed to procure from Papa's childhood days, before the unbidden DEATH OF DEATH. She would clutch at these items; murmur their printed faerytale words into the dim soupy air that was her chamber. They alone soothed her, those words; they alone cast the spell needed to banish this reality into forgetful nightmares. Under the power of those rustling pages, the real world bowed: all the noisome gazes of thieves and bloodied hands of murderers and doubtful promises of lecherous fathers unraveled to an insignificant spool of unremembered horrors.

It was a rarity to read in this world, but Maka could not get enough of it. She smuggled whatever she could from the old days. Tidbits of manuals, waterlogged posters, faded and half-torn textbooks – mostly from Papa, but some rescued from the treacherous mouths of Death City's gutters as well. People deemed it frivolous to read in a lifestyle of fast rewards and faster death; Maka found it enriching and invigorating, a long-lost jewel salvaged from the pugnacious shadows of corruption.

But Maka could not read now.

The pages were dyed in the crimson of the man she did not save, and the growling shades around her clotted together in his image. She could see him now, pale and somber, death-worn, wriggling as a worm does beneath the beak of a bird; screaming, screaming – and then the spray of RED.

_Why didn't you save me? _his cold blue lips would rasp, when his corpse shuffled, stiff and ungainly, from her opened closet door, or when he crept out from the black space under her bed, _Why did you let me die? Why did you let me suffer? Why did you ABANDON me? _

And the wormy fingers, all rigor mortis, would close around her neck, _WHY didn't you SAVE me? _

And his watery, unfathomable eyes, _Why did YOU let me DIE? _

And the cold decay of his flesh; the hot hellishness of his graveyard breath; the squeeze of his dead hand; the dirt and bugs tangled and crawling in his lank-lank hair –

_Why did you only WATCH? _

_ Why did you only STARE? _

_ Why did you LET this whole world ROT?_

"I didn't want to, I didn't want, _I didn't –!" _she would yell, then choke, as the cadaver's fingers wrung life from her throat, and she woke up alone and screaming in an empty room at the top of a ramshackle building.

This dream stalked her for days, ripped violently through the veil of her sleep. She was pale, tired, and tortured always, watching this pockmarked reality through bloodshot eyes. Papa begged her to tell him what happened, but Maka could not speak of her failure, even if her godforsaken father had actually cared (which he didn't really, of course). Still, the almost-innocent fright in his eyes awoke some previously unknown, unfelt, miniscule nerve buried deep within her, and so she assured him, again and again, that she was _fine, _that absolutely _nothing _had happened…

_It was that stupid pianist, _Maka thought savagely now, her hair an uncombed blonde tangle around a grim expression, _he pulled me out of the way before I could do anything. _

She reddened slightly. That pianist, he was plaguing her too. Arrogant, with his wide mouth full of shark's teeth, and hair made up in white spikes, and forlornly blood-colored eyes: what right did he have to mock her? It was true that she reacted on a raging impulse; her mind flickered blank and fiery, and she had foolishly (yes, she blushed about it now) dropped the hidden little blade she kept for defense as she charged after the attacker.

Yes, it was foolhardy, but she still could have done _something._ Even if she only momentarily distracted the murderer, it might have enabled the victim to escape. And she was nimble enough; she would have grabbed the knife fairly quick; she knew how to defend herself.

Anyway, no matter how stupid, no matter how inept, it would have been better than _this – _waking up plagued and shaken in a dark room, tormented by demons of guilt, seeing RED everywhere.

And the RED of that pianist's eyes, mocking her.

_But why had he done it? _

The question wheeled around and around in her heavy mind, an unending circle: _Why did he pull me out of the way? Was he trying to save my life? Did he not want me to die? _

…_possibly._

He accused her behavior as rash and senseless, countered her logic with something about her action resulting in death. And he had acted so swiftly, as if on impulse, snatching her out of the way. One minute she was running, and the next the music had ceased, and his hand was on her arm.

_Or maybe…maybe he knew this would hurt me more. The guilt, the failure, the nightmares. Maybe he was mocking me. _

Equally possible. Actually, more likely. BLOODSTONES were even rarer than books and reading. He spoke with such definition, anyway, such closure, intoning in that irritatingly apathetic voice, "Go home, BLOODSTONE," as though she were marked off, separate, categorized as a distinct and unwelcome alien.

_Jerk. _

She didn't know whether she wanted to seek him out and whack him over the head with the precious thousand-paged novel she owned or whether sweet revenge truly lay in ignoring his pitiful existence for the rest of her life.

Both were pretty tempting, but as her fingers currently stroked the bind of that very thousand-paged novel, the odds leaned decidedly toward the former.

A sound broke through her contemplations: a foot on the rickety spiral staircase that led to her attic-room, coupled by the sweetish smell of tomato soup. Maka knew instantly who it was. She clenched her teeth, her hands mimicking the motion on the book.

"_Maaakaaa!" _the redhead nearly sang from the doorway, "Papa brought you some nice, hot soup to get you through the day! Why don't you let me in?"

Maka puckered her lips in a scowl of certain fury, "You're just kissing up because you broke your promise. Again."

There was a clatter as Papa's hands quavered over the tray he held. Oh yes, she could just _see _him shrinking there, behind the door, guilty at being caught.

"Maka…I know I said I'd come home early again," he murmured awkwardly, pushing over the worn threshold, into the grayish room. His daughter lay on the makeshift bed, a huge, old, tattered thing, full of moth-eaten sheets, white as dust, and a mussed canopy overhead, "…but…" A pause. Maka gauged about three minutes' time for his brain to flounder for an "appropriate" excuse. "…but work got busy, Maka…very busy. …I – I made double my usual salary, though!"

She pressed a patched pillow over her eyes, smelling and tasting lint. Anything was better than looking at him.

"So you've turned yourself into a more expensive object. Great."

There was a _chink_ as Spirit set the tray down on some hard surface and moved toward her.

"…we need money, Maka," he said lowly.

The girl flew up angrily from her blankets, cheeks reddened in disgust; tongue hot with retorts, "You don't _have_ to make money this way! You know I want to help: we could _grow_ things! Bring things to _life!" _She groped at her heaviest tome – the one she was half-considering hitting the pianist over the head with – an ancient, sturdy thing labeled _A GARDNER'S MANUEL: A GUIDE TO MAKING THINGS GROW. _

Maka harbored no true penchant for dirt and seeds (she much preferred words and paper), but as _A Gardner's Manuel _was the longest novel she ever received, and in the best condition, she read this most thoroughly. Besides, there was something beautifully ironic in it, in making things _live_ in a world where the blood of massacres watered the soil.

Papa turned to her with tired blue eyes. His RED hair hung strangely limp around his fair face. His clothes were typically rumpled, his tie undone.

"We can't get by selling flowers, Maka…"

"I'm not talking about flowers," she cut in furiously, wracking messy blonde hair behind her ears, "I'm talking about _food._ Fruit and vegetables. All the ones we buy…they're all dried-out, horrible. I bet we could do a better job. I bet _any_ BLOODSTONE could. We actually care about life."

Lids fell like dusty white sheets over cobalt irises, "And how would we possibly get the seeds?"

This was their eternal roadblock: she never seemed able to transverse beyond this stop.

"We'd find a way."

"You're a very strong young woman, Maka. But…the world we live in…this is not a world of dreams –"

"Don't _lecture _me on the way this world is!"

And she saw him again: the man hanging prostrate on the table, shrinking miserably beneath the lewd gray wink of the knife, sobbing and cursing incoherently. Begging for life – _this _life, distorted and diseased as it was. Nothing but a sniveling mouth that spewed swearwords and pleading; a nose that only dripped-dripped-dripped; and eyes that poured fast with the tears of the desperate. And then rivers of RED, flooding everywhere, staining everything, becoming _one_ with everything; spilling in sluggish streams from the uncouth gash, painting all, all: and it was the same color as a raw, still-beating heart, wrenched freely from some unbidden chest –

"I – know – _exactly_ – what – this – world – is – like," the assertion was low, broken.

Papa stood by the untouched soup, the picture of hypocrisy, a pretty lie stitched up in sleek RED locks and paternal frowns.

"…Maka…"

"Don't lie to me anymore," she breathed, standing up abruptly, "You were doing this _before_ Lord Death fell. You were doing this _way _before Mama left you. You just get paid for it now," her throat clogged up in an odd sort of betrayal, "You like to _act _noble, self-sacrificing, but you're _not._ You had _fun_ last night, didn't you?"

But the truest betrayal was the silence that followed, thin and taut, spread like a smothering sheet, capturing the two of them, entrapping them, dual creatures caught in a web of most despicable truths.

"…come back home early today, Maka…we have to go somewhere. The both of us. Somewhere important. It's very serious, so please…promise me…"

"Promises don't seem to go very far in this house," the words escaped her mouth bitterly.

She left him abandoned in the attic: he was like a house of cards, fallen.

* * *

The sun outside was hot, hot.

STAR had struck again. The first news for her to hear when she stepped out into the blazing tortures of the day. Another house, gutted, dismantled, and apparently a disappearance as well: a tall girl named Tsubaki, made away with in the night, like she was some expensive bit of furniture.

_Despicable. Everything about this world…despicable. _

Other murders too, the rumors sliding to her ears like the slithers of a snake. Probably STAR, but nobody was sure. They were brutal cases: massacred bodies, barely recognizable, butchered to a dozen bloody pieces, all lolling tongue and gaping gouged eye-sockets. The chests were split open too, like eagerly shredded Christmas gifts (Christmas was a sugar-sweet holiday; Maka read if it once in a book), their festering, discolored innards swarmed with flies, a moving, twitching blanket of them, black and buzzing in the heat. The scent rose thick and unbearable into the air, and the sight of disfigured faces, gnarled limbs, straying fingers, only further damaged Maka's already spoiled mood.

Probably STAR, they all said, a little paranoid. Probably STAR, but the gang's symbol was not there, which was curious. The leader was obsessive about his title; he always made sure to mark his murders.

_What does it matter, if STAR did it or someone else did? _The question slunk morbid and muddy into her thoughts, _It's all disgusting…disgusting…_

…_revolting…_

And she collided with another body.

Maka had been striding down the crooked avenues in a self-conjured fog of something between rage and horror when this unhappy occurrence took place. Now she shook her dizzied head and peered through messy ash bangs, spouting an instinctive response that the typically corrupt individual would not care to hear.

"Oh, sorry –"

"_Owe –" _his words jarred against her apology, the RED eyes sullen, "Why don't you look where you're going – oh, it's you. The brainless girl from the bar," the apathetic hands slid lazily into the folds of his pockets with every intention of turning and walking away.

It was _him. _The pianist, the very same one, decked fully in his piranha teeth and white, white hair. After having his arrogant words puncture her nightmares for days, the actual sight and sound rankled jagged nerves down to her very core.

"_Maka – CHOP!" _

Oh yes, she brought the book. No amount of anger at Papa would have her forget _that. _

A thousand pages worth of heavy, heavy words, a bone-hard binding sandwiched between sturdy green covers, now rained down sharply on the unexpected head of the pianist.

"_Arghhh – _what the _hell _is your problem?"

"I'm not brainless," Maka answered smartly, tucking her novel in the selfsame wicker basket she carried last time, "And that's for the other day. I was sick of your condescending attitude."

The boy grimaced his sharp teeth and ran a hand through milk-colored spikes, the annoyance blazing in his RED glare. She thought he was dressed ridiculously, with a slantwise headband spelling out "S-O-U-L" in crooked blue letters, a yellow-black-patterned sweatshirt that recalled the image of a bumblebee clearly to her mind, and the obnoxiously vivid RED pants, as if to echo his eyes.

"That is _not_ cool," he muttered, furiously, and once again turned on his heel.

But now that her ire was successfully spent, another idea asserted itself into Maka's thoughts: she grabbed his forearm, halting him forcibly.

"Wait. Why did you save me? What was the point of that?"

The blood-shaded eyes shifted to her with a look of blasé distaste, "Right, and I'm supposed to tell you after you hit me over the head," he drawled, hands once more in his pockets, the large mouth contorted to a toothy scowl. She noticed that he salivated much more than the average person. Another charming attribute. Lovely. "Idiot. I have somewhere to be. I'm not wasting my time on flat-chested girls with fat ankles."

He – he had been – _sizing her up! _

The flush blossomed like thorny roses against the pallor of her cheeks, a badge of utmost fury, complimenting the RED haze that now blinded her brain. She looked at him, a slouched guy with hands in his pockets, crimson eyes and shark teeth; she looked at him and saw Papa: a scoundrel licking his lips at the vaguest sighting of female curves, a leering thing, full of lust, reducing women to tantalizing, hourglass shapes –

"_MAKA – CHOP!"_

Oh yes. The book again.

"You big, fat _jerk! _How dare you? 'Somewhere to be,' huh? Probably off to see some _woman –"_

"_Argh_ – will you _quit _with that?" The pianist snarled, stumbling away from her in an almost frenetic air, sore and dazed on his feet, "And I'm not seeing anyone! It's about music, you psychopath," he jammed his hands into the baggy pockets of his shirt, a familiar motion by now, his breath labored with shock.

But this did nothing to alleviate her mounting wrath –

"Oh yeah, the music you don't really care about. Doing it for 'the cash,' right? You're no better than my Papa – selling yourself –"

The boy started a bit, and did something peculiar: he leaned back on his heels, hands still stuffed in his pockets, so that he seemed to perform a bizarre balancing act while he spoke to her.

"_Heh. _Your father works in the whorehouse, huh? Wait…I think I've seen him on corners – he's the redhead, right? You look a lot like him –"

"Shut up!" Maka sniped, the words burning in her mouth, "I do _not _look like him. And it's nothing to be proud of."

"Hey. At least it's a job."

"Everyone uses this world as an excuse to do whatever they want," she muttered darkly, a bleak shadow of truth in a city of deception, and now it was her time to turn on her heel. "That includes you – Soul."

She did not need to look at him to sense the surprise, like an electric jolt, run through his body.

"How – did you –?"

"It's written on your headband," she replied blankly, green eyes fixed ahead.

"You can read?"

"Who's the brainless one now?" Her smile was needle-sharp and mirthless.

"And you're…Maka, huh? I sort of got that while you were ramming me over the head."

But her only response was a bitter parade of footfalls, taking her away from him.

* * *

_Why did I come home again? _

She wondered this, while the two of them stood before the dreary edifice that reared before them, a tall, dim, and cracked building, its windows shuttered like so many closed eyes. The shingles were torn, the brick old and mossy, the steps of the porch fissured and water-stained. It sprawled, crumbling and massive, on a lonely hillside, closeted by the huge, shadowy stretch of forest on both sides; and the lane leading up to its door was tangled with ugly weeds and dozing dandelions, gray and brown and coarse and DEAD.

It was an INSANE ASYLUM.

"Don't be scared, Maka," her father puffed up proudly, as he pulled the tatty rope that signaled the screech of the bell, "Papa will protect you."

"No way," his daughter scoffed, to which Papa visibly crumpled.

The large, somber, peeling wood door moaned slowly back on old hinges, revealing just the sliver of a face. Maka had no idea what to expect. Papa refused to relay the details of this trip, merely reinforcing, "It's very important; I need you with me," and since she did not feel like whittling the day away in the lonely gray void that was her room, she went along with it.

Now here they were, before this shambling, dilapidated, ivied fortress, with a patchwork face peeking through the doorway.

"Who's there?" it spoke, menacing in its lowness.

"It's me," Papa replied, with clear familiarity.

"Hold on."

The door shut with eerie slowness: Maka heard a suspicious clattering and shuffling and shifting in the foyer beyond, as though its resident was quickly rearranging furniture and shoving certain items out of sight.

"Come in…"

The door groaned back to reveal a towering man with that same patchwork face, the miniscule stitches marching around his left eye. His hair was limp and silver-gray, though he seemed quite young, and he wore flashing glasses over a drowsy and morbid expression. His shirt was a grungy patchwork item as well, even his shoes were patchwork; and a cigarette dangled from his lips, its noxious fumes seeping and coiling through the air in frail, feathery smoke-tendrils.

But most shocking of all was the _screw. _A massive one, its silver sheen black in the dark, literally protruding out of the side of his head – presently, the man's wandering hand found it. The fingers began to crank the thing forward, with deliberate precision, undisturbed by the mechanical creaks that sounded from its movement.

_What…? _

All words escaped her.

"Stein," Papa blurted in clear relief, pushing both himself and Maka over the threshold, "It took me ages to find you. Why did you move out of your Suture Laboratory?"

So Papa _knew_ this man? Who was he? How come Papa never spoke of him – especially if he was so direly important?

The strange man removed his cigarette languidly from his lips, tapped it so that a litter of ashes rained on the RED carpet.

"Reminded me too much of the good ole days," he replied, placing the smoking stick back by his lips, and Maka was unsure whether she detected sarcasm or not in that indescribable voice, "Had to move out."

Papa seemed discomfited, "So you move into an INSANE ASLYUM?"

"Seemed to fit the times."

Maka could not, in all honesty, disagree with him.

Even so, the room was well-furnished, denoting a significant bit of wealth. More than she and Papa had, at any rate. The fireplace was made of fine marble, the rug underfoot rich and thick, and the paneling on the walls an expensive oak. Still, it was not entirely a pleasant place. Fine as the marble was, the fireplace was spiderwebbed with cracks and gauzy-white with the sticky stuff of spider-silk. The rug was knotty and filthy, evidently trodden on with harsh feet, flecks of dirt and other alarmingly rust-brown spots deeply ingrained into its fibers. And the walls were covered with odd pictures, cumbersome ebony frames that showcased grinning skeletons and sallow faces twisted in agony; severed limbs and the inner bodily workings of still-awake patients.

This was the home of a MADMAN.

_Well…we _are_ in an INSANE ASYLUM. But...the question is…_

…_is this man the doctor or the patient…? _

Why did Papa want her to meet this person?

_Well, why the hell did you trust Papa? _She countered her own thoughts, bitter with herself.

Spirit cupped secure hands on Maka's shoulders, stepping frustratingly near her before turning his attention to this apparent acquaintance.

"Stein…this…this is my daughter…Maka," he spoke haltingly, the way one speaks to a dangerous animal; his fingers squeezed her protectively. Maka bit her tongue, hating the idea of being coddled and shielded, like some vulnerable doe, but she noted Papa's precaution and nervousness all the same. This man was not safe and her father knew it. She needed to be careful.

"Maka," the redhead continued, clearing his throat and glancing at her, "This is…Franken Stein. He – was an old partner of mine. A meister. Before – before I was with your mother."

The shock resounded throughout her entire body, so that a tremor seemed to rattle the very walls of the despicable place.

"What –?" Maka blurted, the green of her eyes blurring fast between the two adults, her heart skipping in fast, excited bounds, "Papa, you had another meister? Why didn't you tell me?" She turned on him fully, "Are you going to be his weapon again? Are you going to finally start fighting back?" Her mind was a rush of faraway dreams and dazzling futures, golden-shined, pure, singing, "Will you teach me?" her gaze whipped back urgently to the MADMAN, "Will you teach me how to be a meister?"

She had discovered, long ago, that she took after her mother; she was not a weapon, as her father was.

Something like a smile curved around the rolled poison of Stein's cigarette, something like a laugh escaped the quiet barrels of his throat. "She's a determined one, isn't she? Just like your dear, dear wife," his eyes, glazed in glass and horrors, drifted from Papa's despairing face to Maka's fierce one.

"Stein – me….and Kami aren't together anymore –"

"Will you?" Maka pressed. She did not feel like listening to her father recount his sins.

Stein leaned back his head and expelled a line of smoke. It danced, tenuous and pearly, from his lips, contorting to a vague and unfamiliar skull before dissipating in the ice-chilled air (the grate to the fireplace was cold and lifeless, bereft of flame, of course).

Maka stepped closer, looked straight through the thick panes to the bleary MAD eyes, and it was then that a peculiar thing happened: another shock jolted through her thin body, and for the briefest moment, she saw – _something – _something _huge_ – surrounding the man, like a crackling dome, only it was a _part _of him – immense, unfathomable, obscene, _obscene – _

She pulled back, a little unsettled. "Will you…?" she still breathed.

_What…was that? _

"No point," Stein responded emptily, "You have no weapon."

"You're jumping a little ahead of yourself," Papa explained delicately to her, his eyes still pinned on his former meister, "We're not…exactly here for the reasons you think. I think Stein might have some information that may help –"

Maka smarted, letdown and frustrated, but before she could retort –

Was there no end to the weirdness of this INSANE ASLYUM?

A figure came plummeting down an ancient staircase, knocking pitifully – with an uncomfortable succession of _thunks – _against every stone step as it tumbled ever closer. Maka only caught a glimpse of something large and shadowy and something small and pink, jumbled somehow inextricably, as though bodily linked. Then she blinked, and only the slight figure remained, rail-thin and shuddering, pinched and gray-faced, with a spread halo of pink-purple hair.

_Is…is that…a…boy or a…girl? _

Stein stood very still, eyes shut beneath the cage of his glasses.

"Crona. What did I tell you about coming out when visitors are over?"

The starved person shrank back against the dark oak paneling, the huge eyes dim and panicked beneath the sloppy-slung, uneven bangs.

"I – I – I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he (she?) spluttered, the bony hand scrabbling at the behind wall, "I – I was at t-t-the t-top of t-the stairs and – and th-then I wa – was at the bottom…" the ramble petered away into shaking incoherency of stammers.

"And _why_ –" Stein continued, with a definite layer of acid now; still he did not look at the person, "Did you…_leave_…your room?"

Clad only in a crumpled white hospital gown, the pink-locked strange murmured something unintelligibly through the spastically tremulous lips.

"Stein –" Papa seemed to gasp, his astonished gaze trailing betwixt child and adult, but the MADMAN ceased his potential inquiry with a toss of his silver-gray head, "No, he's not mine," he responded blandly, unfeelingly, and finally turned to clash his morbid eyes with the shrinking figure that was this pitiful, androgynous boy. "Crona, tell me why you left your room."

"R – Ragnar –rok –" he squeaked, voice fearful and quivering.

Small, helpless, weak. Abused. Maka had the sudden, irrational, impulsive desire to gather the bony boy up in her arms and rock him close to her heart.

"_Don't_ blame it on Ragnarok –" Stein cut in, ire-instilled, and the harshness of his words triggered something instinctive inside her.

"_Don't_ yell at him!" Maka snapped, for somehow the sight of him, huddled shivering and pathetic against the staircase, cold, vulnerable, and small in his filmy white hospital gown, pierced her heart like a dozen glass shards, "Can't you see he's _scared?_ It was an accident," she walked toward the sad little patient, smiling a balmy smile, "It's alright. I won't hurt you. My name's Maka."

"Uh – oh n-n-no," the boy moaned, his great eyes tilting sideways, away from her, "I – I don't know how to – to deal with g-g-girls…"

Maka frowned, "No, really –"

But he must have meant it, for when she took the smallest step nearer, he bolted, like a panicked and tortured bird – its wings clipped – so that rather than fly, it tripped and stumbled awkwardly – the image was recalled so clearly, so very distinctly in the way that boy moved – teetering and staggering blindly and desperately and brokenly up the staircase – that a peculiar lump wedged itself in her throat, something she had not felt since her childhood days.

Maka Albarn did not _cry. _

"Wait – _wait – _I promise I won't hurt you –!"

And beneath the creeping glare of the MADMAN and the horrified gawking of her father, Maka bounded up the tarnished stone staircase after him; chasing the patient deeper and still deeper into the confines of the INSANE ASLYUM: the labyrinthine maze of identical white corridors, all matching, matching, crooked and beguiling. She ran beneath dripping ceilings, over uprooted flagged floors, and past grim unwelcome black rooms where subtle, malevolent, sharp things winked in the darkness – she followed him, the only memory of her presence the inverted crescendo of her footfalls and the faint medley of her voice, shouting: "Wait – wait – _wait!" _before the decrepit ASLYUM swallowed her up entirely.

Spirit choked, but Stein merely sucked another drag of smoke, the miffed words leaving his lips with the curls of gray,

"I wonder what it'd be like to dissect such a cheeky girl."

**A/N:** As always, I'd love it if you guys reviewed! Also: I know it's painfully obvious, but does everyone get what Spirit's job is by now? I just wanna see if it's coming across without being explicitly stated…

And also: **MY LOVELY AND TALENTED SISTER DREW AN AMAZING TRAILER FOR GODLESS. PLEASE LOOK AT IT! LOOK AND REVIEW! IT'S AMAZZINGGG XDD: **her deviantart account is **FullMetalFan112** and the piece is called **'The godless Trailer.' **Please **check my profile** for the link because they aren't letting me put it here :/


	6. BANG,bang, bang, where's your dream?

**Disclaimer: **Soul Eater is owned by Atsushi Okubo and _Bones of Faerie_ is owned by Janni Lee Simner. I own neither.

**A/N: **Once again, another chapter that is **technically not late**, but came _Sunday evening_ instead of early Sunday morning. I'm sorry for this, guys. :/ Well, luckily, my **spring break** is coming soon, so I'll have **more time to write!** Anyway, even though this chapter isn't up as early as the first three, I actually think it's a bit better quality, so I'm more satisfied with it…

Liz and Patty finally appear! This should be **the last "character-introduction-chapter**," so hopefully now the actually plot can begin! Woot! Despite it all, I actually enjoyed writing these character-introducers. I got a chance to play around with character development and see how the SE crew would interact with this world. xD

* * *

**As always, to thank my beautiful reviewers: **

**2random4words: **Thanks so much! I try really hard to keep everyone in character. Yeah, I know some people do ignore the Thompson sisters. : ( I hope this chapter proves that I don't intend to do that.

**SkaleFlapper15: **Omg, thank you SOOO much! You are so supportive xD Ah~ha, um, yes…the plot has – um – _not _actually started, has it? ^^;; I'm really obsessed with a slow buildup of a huge plot because, for some reason, I think that makes it more epic (?), but I promise you that this story's plot is gonna start heating up now that the character introductions are basically over!

**Van the Key of Lain: **Wow – you really thought Crona and Stein fit well together? xD I'm so glad! I've always been intrigued in trying to explore what sort of relationship exists between them. It's one of the things that sparked this whole story. I'm glad you're excited for Liz and Patty! I hope you like the chapter. Indeed, they aren't really that far from their canon origins…

**Mars Death: **Awww, thanks! / I can't help but be critical sometimes, especially when I know some of the chapters are a bit rushed (the end of this one, for example). I'm so glad you want to know more about Kid. His role as a doll sold on a black market is one of my favorite parts of this story. And yup! The pairings will show up eventually, I promise. xD

**Kitori-xxx: **Ahaha, yup! Some of those pairings will happen; a few others; and they'll be a lot of love triangles because I'm evil and like that sort of thing. ^^; Lol, and I assure you, you could guess Spirit's job – I'm not too good on the whole subtle-thing x'D. The chapters shall reveal it pretty openly as the story goes on. It's not a major focus, I was just wondering if people could tell or not. ^^

**Glider389: **And I'm so glad that you can review! Omg, I know, I _love_ Crona too! I can't wait for him(her) to get more involved in this story!

**Bellaciao: **Wow, thank you for the amazing compliments! I'm glad you like the way it's written and that you find the plot original. It sure is – strange. ^^;; I hope you continue to enjoy!

**GrossGirl18: **I'm glad you knew! xD Ah, don't worry, Maka will catch up with Crona eventually. And BINGO, yes, you're dead-on right about Spirit.

**Now, without further adieu, please enjoy: **

**

* * *

**

"_But the memory of my sister's bones, cracked and bloody in the moonlight, haunts me still."_

Janni Lee Simner, _Bones of Faerie _

**Chapter Five: BANG, bang, bang, but what happened to your dream?**

The laughter fell in riotous tumults on the black air, even louder than the gunshots.

_Bang, bang, bang, _and the crumbled brick wall and cold cracked cobbles of the alley were painted in a series of distorted RED stars.

_"Heh, heh, heh," _and BANG, BANG, BANG.

You never realize how much blood is in a human body until it is no longer in it: the amount of sickly-bright, sticky-thick RED that oozed and dripped and squirted and sprayed from the holey thing that lay unrecognized upon the ground could have painted a whole galaxy of crimson. It writhed no longer, thankfully; but at moments its joints twitched spastically, as though the remnants of life still quivered in its tenuous nerves. The eyes were rolled back, and the rosy froth that wreathed the blue lips looked like cranberries.

"Alright. That's enough, Patty. I don't want all this gore in my hair."

"_Heh, heh, heh," _the girl stood there blankly in the tight jeans and blood-speckled face. Oh, she was a sweet one, that girl, all pretty and petite. Short yellow hair that cupped lovingly around a tender chin, and those wide open blue eyes, like windows; and a curvy little shape, and a cute little smile, torn straight across her face in that grin of hers. Wild grins, snorting laugh, the face all spotted in ruby liquid; the color splashed down that complimentary tank-top she wore, so appraisingly tight; splashed all down her front, like staining rose-petals. And angelic white fingers, clutching at the pistol, pointed at the thing on the ground.

"Okay, sis," the voice was high and cherubic, the eyes fixed on the dead shape with something like sheer mania. But the dexterous hand merely spun the PISTOL and released it.

Elizabeth Thompson stood where the PISTOL had fallen.

She was cold, cold, and lusciously beautiful, with a sheet of straight golden-brown hair that fell elegant as a princess, oh, oh, a regular Rapunzel, only its ends dusted feathery and light just above her elbows. But her eyes were glamorous, ice-picks, they shone dazzling and diamond-hard, the glitter of Snow White's mirror, ah, ah, and now who's the fairest one of all? She wore a loose jacket over satin-smooth skin, slim limbs and slight shoulders; the coat luxuriously fur-tipped and luxuriously stolen; and then the belt that hugged deliciously at slender hips, beneath the prettily exposed midriff, that belt was bejeweled, its glinting rubies reminiscent of the skull she burst to get it.

And the cigarette she lit, let dangle from pink-petal lips, oh, it was full of a murderer's charm.

"I think that'll be enough. Damn, Patty, you need a bath now – you're _covered. _Well, grab the cash, will you? There's no point in ruining my nails if you're already dirty," finely-filed nails clutched delicately the slender stick of smoke.

"_Heh – _alright, I don't mind, sis. I mean, it sure was fun, wasn't it? Just look at the way his _head _exploded! It was like a giant watermelon, all full of juice, _heh, heh, heh, _and then he saw me and I think he nearly peed his pants, _ha ha ha – _he saw me and I went BOOM, BOOM, BOOM –"

Elizabeth, more commonly referred to as Liz, now leaned her back against a crumbling mound of wall,

"I think you mean BANG, BANG, BANG –"

"And then he went all crazy and all the juice came _pouring _and I really like that part; it's _sooo _much fun! It's like a piggy in a slaughter-shop – only _better, '_cause it screams a lot more!_ Heh, heh, heh –" _the small figure crouched over the corpse as she spoke, roaming bloodied fingernails over pockets and dripping RED holes, stripping it of gems and cash, bequeathing them to the taller sibling, "Hey, hey – look at _this,"_ she poked at the pale-pale flesh, pulling its rubbery lips back in the grotesque mockery of a silly smile, giggling herself, "He's making a _fuuunnyyy _face – _ahaha –" _

"Ugh! Patty, don't stick your fingers in that dirty thing's mouth! Even if it's dead, it's still a member of _STAR." _

Patty rose to her feet, clever in her stylish little shoes, "He's gonna be really made when he finds out, isn't he, big sis?"

Liz finished piling the loot into a leather bag, then turned to her sister with a sharp grin, "That idiot Black*Star?" she rested a free hand on her cocked hip, "Of course he will. We'll show him what it means to mess around on the THOMPSON SISTERS' turf. Death City was _ours_ first."

And it was true. The THOMPSON SISTERS, soulless beauties from some faraway urban wreck, technically penetrated Death City's rust-thawed gates two months before STAR's audacious entrance. They terrorized, looted, killed; amassed wealth, gained glory, stole fear – touched infamy. Like pretty windup dolls reserved to kill, they drew you in, all glass eyes and candy smiles, and when you leaned in for the kiss – you're already dead. It was that simple. Plastic aesthetics, perfect eye shadow and killer sheek guns. Mindless massacre on bubblegum lipstick. Nail polish and dead bodies.

Oh, you think there's something more to it?

Well, no, you don't.

You don't think on it at all: they're hip, they're beautiful, they're here to murder you. Thoughtless, heartless slaughter.

_What a load of bullshit, _Liz bit down on her cigarette and dragged in the poison-fumes.

Well, what did it matter, if the rest of the world saw them as only skin-deep? She cared nothing for the world, for its despicable masses. People were no more than packs of game, ripe for the picking. She would take what she wanted with a stealth and cunning they did not suspect; then she would end them. And if they never saw the deep and treacherous mind, the swift, the sharp, the steely thoughts that spun themselves behind crystalline eyes – well, she got what she wanted anyway; the prey could just die, and she was on her way.

No one, no one dared challenge them.

But then that _pig – _Black*Star – blundered his way into their realm, screeching his arrogance in a prepubescent voice that grated on her eardrums. The idiot actually thought he could overtake them _– them! – _simply due to something he vaguely termed "bigness" and his collection of clowns and wannabe criminals. His loudness, his carelessness, his bloody bravado were all unbearable, and the fact that he assumed he could thieve Death City on sheer, brainless muscle was frankly laughable.

Oh yes. Liz would have laughed at it, honestly; she would have snorted at his bluster and ignored the high-pitched shrieks of supposed power – laughed, and been on her way.

But then STAR tried to kill Patty.

Liz was _not_ a BLOODSTONE. She just needed to protect her baby sister.

There's a difference, you see?

_(No, you don't –)_

Most importantly, Liz was not a BLOODSTONE.

She could steal, she could murder, she could maim and mock mercilessly: but Patty was her little sister, and _nobody_ went near her. They were a pair, knitted together since the earliest years of childhood. Sure, technically Liz was older, but she could barely remember those vague fragments of life before Patty's existence. There had been no point to them, probably, since caring, feeding, raising, and shielding Patty from harm constituted as Liz's whole purpose in being. That curvy blonde, so small and smiling, seemed always to have been there to her, wide eyes and pink cheeks. She might as well have been another of Liz's limbs, so inextricably did the older sister attach herself to the younger one. In fact, oftentimes, it was as though Patty truly _was_ another limb – her PISTOL form sat so smoothly in Liz's perfumed palm, smooth metal seemingly melding to smooth flesh.

But Liz was _not _a BLOODSTONE and STAR tried to kill Patty.

Something stupid: on one of her escapades, Patty had skipped off near a local STAR hideout, singing about pigs or skulls or giraffes or blood, or whatever else amused her, when she was ambushed.

Now, Patty could take care of herself. She had slaughtered about three of her attackers before Liz found her (laughing while she did it), but that was not the point.

STAR attempted to kill Patty, so now Liz would massacre them.

"Hey, so, sis, where are we going now?"

That selfsame blonde's voice pierced through the RED haze of Liz's thoughts.

"I already told you. Remember, Patty? We're going home first to drop off the jewels, then down to the BLACK MARKET."

"Huh?" Patty turned her blank window-blue eyes to her sister, "But why aren't we taking the cash down with us? Aren't we buying anything?"

Liz smirked, sly as a princess about to throw the prince off her tower,

"No. We're just going down to see if the rumors are true. This could be big money for us, Patty. Huge."

Patty tittered and hopped on her slight feet, "Big money! Big money! _Haha – _but how, sis? What's there? Is it a piggy?"

And the look to dawn on that beautiful face was like a sculpted princess surveying the cracked bones of her prince at the foot of her tower, all smiles,

"No. It's a SHINIGAMI."

* * *

Elizabeth Thompson was nine years old when she slit the whore's throat.

She had been lying in bed, surrounded by the silks and diamonds and satin and chocolate and airy chiffon her daughters had pilfered for her. Like little windup dolls, she called them, her sweet flesh-and-blood: _haha, haha, _little windup dolls, the whore crooned over them, her pretty little porcelain trinkets – _haha, haha, _there to do whatever she wanted them too – her disposable, brainless dolls, _haha, haha, ha-ha_.

And when she didn't want them anymore, when those slick, oily men came over, or those bawdy women who drank too much sherry and laughed too loudly, the whore would pack them up and discard them. Into scant rooms, with no mattress and a ratty blanket, some old tinned tomatoes for breakfast, lunch and dinner: she would throw them anyway and ignore them until they were needed, her little windup dolls.

She told them the world was a bitter hellhole and they would die out there alone.

So, when Liz suddenly realized, at the age of nine, that Patty and her had spent years alone in this hellhole, thieving pockets and killing strangers for a lazy whore who sat on her fat ass all day and night – she recognized the lies and slit her throat.

Her little windup doll – perhaps the key in her back was spinning in the wrong direction? – greeted her with the kitchen blade, and there was a lovely rosy spill of RED on fluffy lace pillows.

She did it without Patty.

Not that she thought it would bother the blonde, or that it would stain or harm or convolute her in anyway –but just she didn't think Patty needed all that dirty blood on her; a whore's blood.

So, Liz murdered their mother with an ordinary knife and left with Patty forever.

Nine years later, BANG, BANG, BANG, and the THOMPSON SISTERS were still on top.

She still did not regret it.

* * *

Liz cringed at the taste of dank, rank air and wondered why she was wasting her thoughts on a dead whore.

She had not spent any time on her dead mother for years, but lately, her mind kept conjuring the image: a pale-pale cadaver, thrown limp across the plush bed; a flood of chestnut curls, tossed across a startled expression; and the big, pouty lips, hanging lax in an eternal stillness. All dressed up in slinky silks, now all deformed by the spitting onrush of dark RED, spurting from a wildly shredded neck: a wicked crimson that oozed down a cheap body with all the steady permanency of death.

_Why am I still thinking about this? It's not like I care. She was a whore. She was starving Patty. She needed to go. _

"Hey, sis! Look! We're here!"

Liz awoke from reluctant reveries to stare down the slime-coated corridors. They were deep underground, in the moist, dripping, green-corroded tunnels that constituted as the BLACK MARKET. The network of filthy tunnels connected a series of wide, gray chambers together, dimly-lit and mildewed: these mammoth rooms were trussed up with flammable chicken-heaters at their ceilings for a pathetic warmth and supplied with a rotted, termite-infested stage to showcase the (usually live) items on sale.

They had just reached the innermost sanctum, a huge, colossal room flooded with people, ranging from grimy, gap-toothed hunchbacks to sleek, sly-smiling criminals with shining white collars. Liz snatched a hold on Patty's wrist and pushed them through the nauseous thickets of people, fighting for sight of the stage. Overhead, miles above, from a wooden shaft on the immense, water-stained dome of a ceiling, a rabid monkey screeched and swung from the rafters.

_Ugh! Who the hell let animals loose here? I can't take this place – it better be worth it – it better be here… _

The THOMPSON SISTERS emerged on the rim of the crowd and stared up at the ancient stage, its threadbare curtains spun with spiders.

And there it was.

Liz's heart picked up automatically: _the money, the money, the money. _

"Will you look at that, Patty? It looks just like a human," she squinted the ice-dark blue eyes at the bloodless boy-thing onstage, hanging languidly in its chains, "Wow. It really looks like –" Oh, the despicable ironies, "A _doll. _I wonder how they keep its complexion so flawless," she muttered with something like jealous irritation.

_"Heh, heh, heh," _Patty cackled, clinging to her sister's arm, "Do you think, sis, if we waved, it'd say hello?"

Liz turned to her with a blunt eye, "Of course not. You know what a SHINIGAMI is. It's a doll that breathes and moves and talks. It doesn't really think. It's really rare, though."

"Ouuu," Patty crooned, shading her eyes with her hand for a clearer look, "It's really pretty, sis."

"It's really expensive," Liz muttered in her ear, "Once we steal it and resell it, we'll be filthy rich," her rose-pale lips contorted in a brooding scowl, however, "Something that rare must have really tight security, though…"

Patty stood up to her full height, "Nothing _you_ can't handle, big sis! We'll take them out no problem!"

_"Shhh –!" _Liz hissed, for Patty's voice was growing precariously louder, but the seller was distracted by a man with mocha-skin and did not hear them.

Liz leaned back on her hip, surveying the scene. The grotesque seller, a man with livid eyes and yellow fingernails, was twisting the boy-doll's face to and fro, while the apparent buyer watched with rapt interest. The SHINIGAMI made no response to the touch or the stares, but simply sat languidly in his chair, chained, the honey-fire eyes full of a harrowing emptiness. It seemed – if it had feelings – beyond depression, beyond agony, beyond the hope of salvation. It merely sat there, unmotivated, pretty and useless, dying under the lustful glares of potential buyers.

Suddenly, the mocha-skinned man sidestepped the seller and reached out a greedy hand, murmuring something while his fingers played with the marble chin and cheekbones.

"Ugh – glad I'm not in _his _shoes," Liz murmured with a shudder of disgust, "Do you say the way the customer's feeling him up? You know what's on _that guy's _mind…how revolting; poor kid…"

"Huh? Hey sis, I thought it was an 'it,' not a 'he,' or a 'poor kid.' Should we feel bad for it?" Patty a wide and innocently questioning expression toward her – as innocent as a face just scrubbed bereft of blood can look.

Liz jolted with a wrenching feeling of horror and suddenly her head was spinning; suddenly her mouth was dry and her temples were throbbing –

"No, no – uh – I _meant _'it,' Patty. It just looks so – human. And of course, we don't feel bad. We're the THOMPSON SISTERS. We don't even know what pity is."

And they didn't. She didn't. _She _didn't.

Liz was _not _a BLOODSTONE.

But it occurred to her, abruptly, as she looked back up at the transaction onstage, that this whole thing would be highly unsettling to a BLOODSTONE. To one of them, it would appear like a pretty little boy, all innocence, strung up to a chair, being bartered for like some delicate glass object, brainless, thoughtless, powerless. Like a person, vulnerable under the smoldering gaze and precarious touch of a potential OWNER; helpless as the lusting stranger ran his finger disturbingly over deadly-limp lips.

Yes – to a BLOODSTONE – this would seem – _wrong._

_ What…what if…it was – Patty up there?_

The thought came unbidden, like an unearthly worm crawled up from a grave to her brain: it needled its way into her thoughts, and a rapid blackness enveloped her mind, a swift dizziness returned, and a sharp, prickling, stabbing pain kneaded at her temples. Liz felt her feet shift beneath her, the room blur around her, the heat press in against her, suffocating – she heard the far-off shriek of the monkey, like a monstrous dream; and the boy-doll on his demented pedestal reared before her, spinning, while the mocha-skinned man fondled his face – and – and – _what if it was Patty? – what if it was Patty? – What if, what if, what if – ?_

"SIS!"

Why – why was that voice calling?

"SIS – are you alright? Are you alright?"

Couldn't they tell she was sleeping?

Sleeping…_sleeping_…and then heavy depths of the darkness receded; the room swung into gray and grisly light; and the bustle and murmur and roar and motion of the place returned; the coldness beneath Liz was hard and atrocious. The sweat that clung to her forehead was like icy gems on a heated brow. Her body ached, sore from the impact with the flagged ground; her soaked hair was thrown about her face in a wet whirlwind.

"Ew – ew –" Liz gasped, and she noted the velvety queasiness in her throat, the sick upheaval in her stomach, "How – how did I get on the floor –?" She shuffled up on shuddering, stilted legs, swallowing back her body's desire to vomit.

"You fell down," Patty breathed, with an uncharacteristically grave expression on the usually bright face, "You – you – were looking at the SHINIGAMI and – and then your eyes rolled and – and you fell down."

Liz could tell, but the eerie stillness of her sister, the stricken eyes and somber mouth, that Patty was worried. The thought needled at her already tumultuous stomach, bothering her.

"Don't worry about it, Patty," she brushed the girl's shaggy yellow-blonde bangs out of her eyes, "I'm fine. _Heh. _I guess we've been pushing ourselves too hard."

"I shot you too much," Patty blurted automatically, a quiver hopping in her usually laughing vocals.

"No – no –" Liz grimaced as another wave of nausea broke over her. Around them, the BLACK MARKET continued, uncaring, unfeeling, a distorted mass of living vice, fixed on their business, on corrupt deals and nightmare-sellings, unaware of the sickly-white girl who just fainted, of the smaller sister who trembled with uncertainty, "It wasn't that. This place is just really crowded. Come on, Patty…we'll come back later."

"Come back, sis? You sure?"

Liz wiped her sweaty brow, turning her back on the doll in its chains.

"Uh-huh," she whispered through cold lips, faint, faint, "We're gonna steal that SHINIGAMI if it's the last thing we do."

After all, Elizabeth Thompson was not a BLOODSTONE.

**A/N: **Thanks so much for reading! I'd love if you'd review! :)


	7. SENSELESS Defiance of Scentless Flowers?

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Soul Eater or _Doors of Chaos. _They are each owned respectively by Atushi Okubo and Ryoko Mitsuki.

**A/N: **Okay, I know I left long and frantic messages to whoever commented on the last chapter, but I'm going to repeat what I said here – I'm **SO SORRY **that there was a delay with this chapter. I was overrun with schoolwork and basically exhausted, so I didn't have it out in time. As I promised in a previous weighty author's note, **I tried to send private messages to notify my delay.**

However, I was limited to sending messages only to **people who signed in and left reviews** – it's not that I have a problem with unsigned/people reviewing without signing it – it's only that I had no real way of contacting you :(

I received a couple of P.M.s from people telling me to chill out about the delay – **THANK YOU so much for your kindness and understanding! **Honestly, however, one of the reasons I freak so much over it is because it's really in my nature to procrastinate and be late everything. This is truthfully the **first story **I've ever tried to be faithful about updating with – just check any of my other stories on this website (untouched for years) and you'll see. **I desperately want to make sure that doesn't happen again. **

Beyond that, I don't want to say this after the whole delay fiasco, but I'm still disappointed with this chapter. It was really supposed to be longer. I think I managed to get **some** development out between Black*Star and Tsubaki, but I wanted more. There's **a lot more I wanted to get in here** (you'll see when you reach the end), but as it's already 6:21am where I am, I knew it would be impossible to crank out anything else.

I **might** update twice this week just to finish what I could not complete tonight and then move onto the next chapter. I have a skeletal outline for this story and this chapter really wasn't supposed to end here…

**Once again, I really want to apologize for the lateness of this chapter and its despicable shortness. I promise I'm going to make it up with faster and (hopefully) longer chapters! **

Okay, I know I said I would **individually message people a thank you for reviews, **but I decided it would probably be best just to **repost the chapter with the thanks here, **just so I can get **everybody – even those who didn't sign in to review! ^^ **

The gratitude here is for all people who reviewed **chapter five (the Thompson chapter) – **in the next chapter, I'll thank all the **lovely reviewers who commented on chapter six! **

**SkaleFlapper15: **I'm so thrilled that you're excited about the turn of events in this story. The gears of this plot should really start moving soon…

**2random4words: **Oh! You called Liz a bloodstone! She'd be so upset! (Yep, she's def got denial written on her forehead :P) Omg~~I'm so happy they fit your bill! I'm trying really hard to keep everybody in character! Thank you!

**AkiraWolfWriter888: **ZOMG! I'm **so** honored you liked Patty! I was the most worried that I would fail to capture her whacky (and amazing) personality – especially while putting a darker twist on it. I'm blushing that you like their incorporation – I really enjoyed writing about them. Heh, heh, ouu, Liz would be made at your (totally true) accusations!

**Mars Death:** Thanks sooo much! I'm so honored you like the doll references! They are truly some of my favorite metaphors – I'm really having fun playing around with the whole DTK-Thompson-doll thing, so I'm thrilled you like it too! And you have no idea how much it means to me that you say you like my style…I know I can be wordy. Thank you!

**Mion Mion Kyun: **You have me blushing! You really waited all night? I'm **SO SORRY** that I couldn't P.M. you to tell you about the delay with the next chapter – despite being on this website for a long time, I have no idea how to search people…so I can only really P.M. if I can click on your name. :/ Still, you have **no idea** how much I appreciate that you read!

**Kitori-xxx:** R-really? You liked this one the best? WOOT! Omg, I'm so thrilled you liked Liz/Patty that much! Thanks!

**GrossGirl18: **Haha, Liz would be so mad at you! (Even if it's true) x'D And yes, Patty is a bit if a predicament…thanks so much for reading!

**Aras the crazy writer: **And you're a really awesome person! Thanks so much for taking the time to read and review! I'm thrilled you enjoyed it!

**Crona Katartist: **Omg…I'm so thrilled you liked it that much! I think you're fantastic for leaving such a great review x'D Haha, I'm glad you're enjoying Liz's denial!

* * *

"_The Living Star gone far, far away… I sleep in eternal darkness."_

Ryoko Mitsuki, _Doors of Chaos _

**Chapter Six: SENSELESS defiance from scentless flower? **

Fallen over, tossed and tumbled, adrift in this nightmare that was now her reality.

She was all flowers: torn petals, scentless and flavorless, shriveled beneath the murderous blaze of a star. She swallowed, and the feeble motion stung against her bruised throat; the hair hung loose and unbound about her face like a tangled funeral shroud; and the face itself was as waxy and somber as a dying person. She sat crouched in corners, unbidden, wanting to fade away into the chipped and graying plaster, to disintegrate to dust and dirt, to slip fluid and invisible through the festered cracks in the wall.

She could not stay here, she could not, _could not. _

But then, she must. As father predicted, it happened. And now she had to keep her promises.

Tsubaki heaved a tired sob, the eyes glazed, white fingers dragging at a white mouth. She would protect Masamune, no matter how hard; no matter what the costs were. Mother had died protecting him, after all, and now father followed an identical path, braving the blood-run streets of Death City and the chaotic sands of the outer deserts, facing bandits, murderers, and monsters alike – and all for the safekeeping of their special boy, their beloved ENCHANTED SWORD.

Tsubaki wasn't special, you see.

A bouquet of flowers, dropped lost and insignificant on some windowsill, unnoticed. She could see that bouquet, the blossoms spilling from its crumpled paper, the RED petals lolling, withered and unremembered. And the whole thing was scentless. Strangers would come, gather the flora up in their arms, breathe in heady sighs, but no fragrance would come, no sweet perfumed poetry would tickle their nostrils. And what is a flower – if it has no perfume?

What did strangers do with a flower without fragrance?

Silent, silent, faded and forgotten, a flower with no scent; perhaps left trampled in a muddy garden somewhere, all drowned in the muck.

And if a flower is meant to spread fragrance, then surely a bloom with no perfume is no bloom at all.

Tsubaki was a flower that was not really a flower.

She was _not _special.

_Oh…what am I doing, thinking these things? _Tsubaki pressed the fitful ghost of a smile to her lips, haggard beneath long ropes of hair, _Such silly thoughts aren't going to help me now. And it's not like I ever felt at all bitter about Masamune. I love him… _At the thought of her brother, the embers of her heart roused to an inferno of affection, like a searing brand, _I swore I would protect him…and I will. My special, special brother…I promised father; I'll keep that promise…I'll protect him… _

Now the door shrieked open on its failed hinges and Tsubaki braced herself.

But it was only the right-hand man, walking remarkably steady for someone who was never seen without the company of a green-tinged bottle. Such a strange face, this one possessed, all waxy and gray, with a little black mole perched on the right side of his chin, and a patch of freckles solely beneath the sullen right pink eye. And the vivid hair, half done up in orange spikes, the other half slopping long and black-emerald down his neck, careless in its ponytail. She had never seen such a bizarre and mismatched person, almost dizzying to look at; never in all her life. The jumbled features were almost distracting.

He entered, took a swig of his drink, and dropped a bowl of greasy brown broth at her feet.

"It's the best I could get for now," he informed her, in that low voice that was somehow – _odd, _so roughened, but almost high at the same time, "Eat it. You'll get sick if you don't."

Tsubaki curled her chilly toes under the hem of her skirt, surveying him around the unkempt web of her hair, "You saved me," she murmured, frail, frail, a scentless blossom blown away, "You – saved my life."

His figure stiffened, the bottle's rim still hanging at his lips, "I have no f—cking idea of what you're talking about," he grumbled uncouthly, wracking a hand through the sea of carrot-colored spikes, "I'm a member of STAR. I do what benefits my gang. That's f—cking _it. _You'll get yourself killed with that attitude."

Tsubaki looked at him. Somewhere, beneath the excess curses and ample gruffness, buried deep, deep, ran the golden chord of compassion: she could just hear it, singing faintly, in the way he muttered those offhand warnings, in the edgy shifting of his feet. She noticed it in the tense lines that bunched by his mouth, the hand gripping awkwardly and heatedly at his ginger roots.

There was goodness in this person, and he was frightened to admit it. Tsubaki was willing to bet her life on it – and, in a way, she already was.

"But I'm sure you are," she pressed on gently, arms wrapped melancholy about the long legs, "It's why you told him I was a DARK ARM…isn't it? _H – he _was going to kill me…so – so you told him I was a weapon; you kept me alive –"

"I also f—cking ransacked your home and helped kidnap you –"

Tsubaki shook her head, somber as a flower in the wind.

"I know…you've done bad things," and that voice, so soft, it was inflexible too, "But I can't help but think you told him I was a DARK ARM to protect me," and a tremulous smile quivered small and worn and bruised at the corners, "You – you _say _you're bad…but you're really just a kind young man…"

The right-hand started, nearly reeling at the comment, "Uh – _heh – _I'm a _chick_ –"

In that infinitesimal fraction of a second just before the door was burst open in a riot of splinters, before the old hinges were propelled full-speed from the doorway in an act of sheer and pointless violence: in short, in that half-second just before _he _stepped in, a roving blue star with cosmic murder in his eyes – Tsubaki gawked at the right-hand. She noticed the faintly feminine structure of the face, acknowledged the curves potentially hidden beneath capacious clothes, finally understood the meaning behind the rough-high oddness in _her _voice.

She blushed, humiliated, murmured "oh" in a startled murmur, and possibly would have said more, if not for the explosion at the doorway and the abrupt arrival of her nightmares.

_You could have _walked_ through the door,_ some unknown bit of her surfaced, muttered darkly in the back of her brain. But Tsubaki was never the sort to say such things and to do so now would result in clear and inevitable death. So, instead, she merely pushed herself back into the flaking plaster, screwed shut her tortured eyes, and shivered in the light, filmy nightgown she was stolen in.

"Did she eat?" his voice growled, and Tsubaki sickened.

"She will," the right-hand asserted, but STAR's leader ignored her entirely; she felt the heaviness of his footfalls, resounding through the wooden floorboards, and she heard the powerful _thud_ of each successive step, bearing down on her eardrums. Her heart seemed to seize up, clutched by a dozen needles of pure panic, her breath thinned to ragged wraiths that barely touched her starved lungs.

Oh, oh, it was happening again – all over again – the snarled questioning, the brusque voice, the brutal hands grappling at her face and neck, the calloused fingertips grating at her scalp; all, all over again – like a twisted merry-go-round, circling, circling – there was no end in sight, _none, none_.

"My weapon will do as _I _say," his words punctured the weighty silence, "I _order_ you to eat."

_No, no – _she needed to be brave, she _needed_ to be brave; she needed to remember what was at stake, oh, oh, _Masamune, dear, dear brother – _she recalled his image in her mind, tall and graceful, with those deep, sorrowful eyes, like endless wells, and that lank raven-black hair, framing a sad expression; would she not protect her brother? Would she abandon him? Would she leave him to the bloody hands of criminals?

No, no, she could _not_ falter –

"I, I –"

"Didn't you hear me?" he scoffed, and his tone dragged like bloodied thorns over her ears, low and dark and somehow tremendous all at once, "I know it's impossible to ignore a voice as big as mine. I told you to eat. So – _EAT!"_

And then her head was against the wall, a sharp and jarring collision, and there was pain lancing hot and bitter from her temple to both eyes, oozing as reluctant tears. Unwillingly, the knitted lids peeled back, only to glimpse the rugged grimace of the deranged boy, wild, wild, the blind massacre of his expression surrounded by jagged blades of blue hair.

"You understand? YOU UNDERSTAND?"

Tsubaki gasped, cringing under the coarse feel of his palm on her face, "S – stop! _P-please! _D – Don't you f-feel bad at – _at all?"_

"_DO WHAT I SAY!"_

Fissures snaked swift and devious up the wall, formed by the abrupt crash, the obsessive force of his arm. Clouds of dust and plaster coughed from the newfound crater, swilling in the frenetic air, settling on her ebony locks like a disintegrated wedding veil. The blaze of agony surrounded her forehead like a ring of fire, and her stomach knotted in horror and disgust.

How – how did he even expect her to eat?

"I – I'm _n-n-not h-hungry!" _she sobbed with something like defiance, and in her mind there was Masamune, and the memory of his smile alone brought the words to her lips.

"_WHAT? Damn BITCH! I'm BLACK*STAR! You DON'T talk back to ME!" _

His grip tightened on her face, her vision blurred in the noxious smear that was pain and plaster, and the only thing she could hear was the rapid _beat-beat-beat_ of her desperate heart, screaming against her ribcage.

_M…Masamune…_

Outside, by a little garden, all pretty with stones and crimson-pink flowers.

Masamune, smiling, the open blossom in his palm, like a delicate butterfly settled in soft hands, its ruby leaves stirring.

"Tsubaki," he would murmur, smiling all the while, smiling over the fluttering RED petals, "What would you like to do today? Tsubaki, Tsubaki –" and smile, smile, smile, downy as a cloud, light as sunshine in a decrepit world, "What would you like to do today –?"

_Oh, brother…I'll do…I'll do…_

A sea of ruffled RED flowers, bobbing agreeably in the wind, something only a BLOODSTONE could grow; a secret little garden; a place for Masamune and her –

Smile, smile, "What would you like to do today, Tsubaki?"

…_whatever…whatever… _

"Whoa – Whoa – _Black*Star! _She'll die! She'll f—cking die! I thought you wanted to be a MEISTER!"

But her brother's memory was fading: Tsubaki could barely see him that way, smiling in their secret garden, laughing, enfolded by waves and waves of fluttery crimson flora. He looked tall, dark, morbid, the skin pulled taut over gaunt cheeks, the hair hanging limp as a dead crow's feathers, and the eyes were sightless, lightless, almost mindless.

…_I'll do…_

"You're small and pathetic. I could slaughter you with my hands behind my back – I could slaughter you without _moving. _I'm bigger than this whole universe – bigger than _anything. _Anyone who gets in my way dies."

…_I do whatever you want, Masamune…_

The hand relinquished her, and Tsubaki dropped in a chaos of dizziness and smiling brothers and lunatic stars, sliding down the ethereal path of white plaster to the creaking floorboards. Her eyes half-rolled, scentless flower fell, shuddering and trembling and choking, into a dismal pit of almost-unconsciousness.

_ What…what do you want to do…Masamune…? _

"After all, I've already surpassed the gods."

The last thing Tsubaki remembered was _his_ face, as if chiseled in stone, a stark, brutal, hard face, raw with its own power, his eyes full of flaming stars, pinpricks of hellfire, eating at green irises. Only this, and the hands of the right-hand on her shoulders, cool and rough, hoisting her up from the floor.

_I – I know…let's- let's play ball…_

* * *

Black*Star sat at the feast, the center of attention.

Before him heaved a mountain of food, all heaped high in glorified devotion to him: obese turkeys overstuffed with uncommon herbs, hugely fat hams, their rosy potbellies turned upside, vast slabs of bleeding RED meat, salivating with juices; precipitous piles of succinctly purple grapes, tremendous mounds of crisp-skinned apples, an endless mass of vividly-colored oranges; fizzing jugs of impossibly rare carbonated drinks, flowery-scented teas, icily clean water – and, of course, an infinite supply of alcohol, beer, rum, and vodka.

Yes, Black*Star sat amidst it all, a kingly display unheard of in this seedless reality of blood-soaked soil and shriveled crops. While scanty-fingered outcasts bit into husks of dried fruit and swallowed dust, he gorged on royal meals of pilfered vittles, all sumptuous, all heavenly, all moist and bountiful. And why shouldn't he? Was he not higher than the rest? Was he not superior to everyone? Was he not best – the strongest – was he not _colossal?_

Of course, he reared immense among the loads of food, all insignificant and pitiful gifts that could never encompass his greatness – his divine bigness.

The rest of STAR were ants, crawling pathetically on their stomachs, beneath him; they received a profound honor in dining on his scraps.

Black*Star's feet rested on what little inch of table was bereft of provisions, the powerful hands folded behind his head.

"Dumb bitch," he muttered to himself, his mind still on captured flowers, "She'll do whatever I want. She doesn't have a choice. Everyone listens to me."

He grabbed at an apple and bit into it, scowling around the white chunks in his teeth. He had stocked the weapon in one of the lesser rooms, its flimsy stone walls done up in plaster. Her despicable and pathetic attempt at audacity resulted in a crater, of course, but it was not the damage to the chamber that rankled at Black*Star now.

He was accustomed to cultivating fear in the eyes of his victims: the insurmountable fright was a pale shadow of his indescribable abilities, his indefinable glory; it represented one of the few and precious moments when the small, minor minds of weak things almost fully comprehended what his greatness truly meant. He relished in the sight of such terror, dawning black and wretched in dilated pupils.

But this – this _girl._

What was her name again –?

Ah, yes. _Tsubaki. _

A little flower, a throwaway blossom, pitiful, weak, shivering: he saw that selfsame fear in her, knew it to be there, in the way her pale face twisted at the sight of him, her long limbs clutched convulsively to her slender body when he entered the room. She was riddled with horror at her predicament, counted herself as among the damned and the murdered, the diminutive and the powerless. As she should.

No, no, she certainly harbored the appropriate amount of horror – that was as it should be.

It was just the tenacity about her, the unexpected stubbornness that emerged in those glassy blue irises. Even now, the thought of it soured the pit of Black*Star's stomach, curdled the food in his mouth to blood and bitterness. He abused several STAR members on the way here, blew up multiple walls, raged and snarled and cursed, slit a few unsuspecting throats, bloody and slick, but the memory of her vague defiance still lingered, like the haunting of some infinitesimal ghost.

She was so small; she was not _worth _his glorious fury.

_I'll break her, _he thought savagely, teeth shredding at the fruit's skin and flesh, _In the end, she'll do whatever I want. No one gets away from Black*Star – no one ever will. _

As if plagued with ennui, the gang-leader threw down his mutilated apple core, his eyes roving as hard jade across the cavernous chamber.

"You," he growled, and his tone was contorted with bloodlust, "Come here."

A lanky blonde figure clad in low, slinky pants and too much jewelry started, nearly stumbled as he made his way toward STAR's leader, sitting important on a lofty dais. The lesser scrambled, sunshine-yellow locks sweeping over a frantic expression, long, frail limbs snatched absurdly around a brown paper bag.

"Uh – uhm – yes, sir? Would – would you like something – else?"

The lackey tipped his bag over in sheer panic, revealing a brilliant plethora of stolen goods, all rare and sweet.

"No," Black*Star barked, knocking the whole thing out of the blonde's arms, showering the stone floor in a riot of bread and vegetables; he instead ripped at an uneaten turkey, examining its butter-browned surface carefully before turning to the cowering boy, "This meat might be poisoned. Eat it. If you die, I can get rid of it."

He flung the leg at the blonde, who caught it with something like a sob, the frenetic string of "Y – yes, sir" and "Of - of course, sir," and "Whatever y-you say, sir," slipping almost incoherently from his lips. Black*Star glanced away, not truly caring, already bored with the predicament.

"What's your name?"

"H – Hiro, sir," the boy squeaked, seeming tears salting the potentially deadly meat.

"Hm," Black*Star grunted, displeased, "I don't like that name. We're gonna call you Loser. Got that?"

"Y – yes, sir," the smile that scabbed at the lackey's lips was decidedly forced.

"Okay, then get this," he lifted his foot from the table and rammed it into one of the wooden legs: there was a fabulous crash, a tumultuous collapse of goblets and plates and saucy muttons, splattered fruits and dripping bottles and an unattractive mixture of many other once-edible things, now mangled and spoiled beyond repair.

Black*Star turned to Hiro – or would it be Loser? – with the crooked look of a demon, all grins,

"If you survive, clean this up. Then come to my chambers. I want to test some new moves on you."

Which meant probable death.

He abandoned the boy to his stammers and sobs, striding down the long, dirt-colored hallways, still not entirely freed from the weapon's irritating influence. It nagged at him like a buzzing insect, miniscule, unimportant, petty, but somehow infuriating because of its damnable smallness. Big stars did not waste their profound thoughts on existences as meaningless and pointless as frail girls in tattered nightgowns.

And where the hell was April, anyway? She was his right-hand; she was supposed to be here, dishing out his orders to the lesser members for him. He ordered her to stay behind and fix the wall, but if she didn't show up soon, he would take out his annoyance on her too.

As if in response to his bloody musings, April suddenly appeared in the hallway, moving toward him with urgent footsteps. Her face was dismal and gray in the torchlight, the seemingly mismatched eyes blazing in the shifting mass of shadows that was the corridor.

"What took you so long?" Black*Star prompted, but she supplied the answer almost instantaneously.

"Someone's discovered STAR's location. He's probably just a thief, here to steal food, but he already knocked out the upper-level guards. He's pretty good."

Something stirred past the molasses-thick boredom and irritable frustration that encased him. A fervor of excitement, an abrupt, chaotic, bloodlusting hiss in his veins that touched at his eyes in the shape of burning stars. The thing that contorted at Black*Star's mouth was the grin of a murderer, twisted and manic, smiling over the butchered masses and RED-slicked fingers, smile, smile, smile.

_Pretty good, huh? Whoever he is, I'll crush him ten seconds flat. Just another chance to prove my bigness. _

"Go get the weapon."

April almost jolted, clearly startled, "Huh – you sure? Faerytales say that meisters and weapons' souls mix or something. If she hasn't agreed yet –"

The rage that boiled over him held all the intensity of a heated blade, plunged into the very depths of hell: it sliced a RED haze across his mind, burned as acid down his throat, distorted his judgment to a clouded, cramped, crimson cavern of perpetual fury.

"Wanna die, April?" His fist met the wall and an immediate hole gaped from its impact, "Are you questioning _me? _I'll just overpower her pathetic soul."

His right-hand was expressionless, still and silent as someone half-dead.

"…and if her soul breaks…"

But this triggered an literal inferno inside him: Black*Star yanked at her wrist, forcing her into the corridor wall with all the violence a demon, blind behind the stars in his eyes; and April's face was blank, blank, gray in the weak torchlight –

"I don't see why it matters," he snarled, "You're getting along fine without one."

It was common knowledge in STAR that April had no soul.

It was not something explained or questioned, nor did Black*Star truly care about the detail at all.

April watched him bluntly, the clashing eyes impenetrable. Her gaze was steady-steady on his, heavy and deep, lost within the unknown confines of her peculiar mind. But she nodded slowly, disengaging herself from the threat, racking back spiky ginger locks.

"…I'll get the girl."

Black*Star knew there had never been any other option.

* * *

In reality, STAR had various headquarters, five to be exact, scattered about both Death City and the outer deserts. According to April, if you were to connect the hideouts on a map, the shape formed would be his insignia, the dreaded star people associated with murder and ruin. Black*Star did not doubt it. He was such a big star that he dictated things like that subconsciously, without any real knowledge or effort. He was certain everything he touched somehow bore his mark. He knew he could crumple whole cities in his sleep if he wanted to. His very footsteps were enough to give his enemies seizures.

But the apex of the gang – the central headquarter – was the very tip of the star, and it stood just outside Death City, deep beneath the ancient sands of the desert. A yawning cave led down, down, down, into a labyrinth of dim tunnels and natural chambers, echoing in their eternal stillness, black, whispering, waiting. Black*Star breached the watching emptiness of those tunnels, unafraid, and ordered STAR to overtake and renovate them. Some chambers, rendered so utterly derelict by nature, needed to be completely overlaid with plaster, but the result was an underground fortress almost entirely impregnable.

Now Black*Star stood outside the mouth of that cave, bathed in the bloody moonshine. Tsubaki huddled wan and miserable besides him, a reluctant flower, drowned in a mourner's veil of dark hair.

About a foot away, also silvered in the light of that maniacal crescent, smiling its RED-stained smile, stood the strange, an unremarkable figure with drifting ash-white hair and a sword. The bodies of STAR's guards lay about him, battered, bruised, but breathing – useless sleeping masses in the dark, merely unconscious.

"Didn't kill them, huh? What's wrong? Afraid to make me angry?"

A sob fluttered in Tsubaki's throat, weak on her lips. She did not try to run, knowing it was futile, but still her ink-blue eyes mirrored the faint lights of Death City, as if searching for some sort of comfort in the crooked maze of rusted, haphazard buildings.

The stranger chewed on a bit of wheat, seemingly unaffected, "You are the boy that has taken the path of the demon."

It was not a question, but a confrontation, a statement, a solid fact.

Black*Star surveyed the man, pitifully small, nothing but an insignificant figure with a glittering stick, attempting to ward away the all-encompassing murk of the night – _and he dared try to address him that way? _So week, too feeble to even kill the guards, frailer than a newborn bird tumbled unexpected from the next – _and he honestly wanted to confront him? Him? The almighty star? _Black*Star imagined the head cracked beneath his palm, the body bent and twisted, the half-hidden face warped in the mask of terror all victims donned at the sight of him.

"Everyone knows who the great Black*Star is. Who the hell are you?"

The stranger watched him through cobalt eyes, almost thoughtful, "Mifune."

And who the hell was _that?_

"Well, Mifune," and Black*Star's voice was forlorn in the dark, "You're gonna die tonight."

The shrieking wind seemed to wail its agreement.


	8. BLOODY Stars Hate Faerytales?

**Disclaimer: **Atsushi Okubo owns _Soul Eater_ and Ray Bradbury owns _The Halloween Tree. _

A/N: Okay…so, I feel the end of this chapter is **awful, **but I **needed **it up before Sunday, because this Sunday is **a chapter about Death the Kid. **This turned out to be a bit longer than I wanted it to be…again, not at ALL satisfied with the ending…but it's six-thirty where I am and I needed to get it up…

So, I **apologize** for the grammatical errors that are definitely in this. I'll probably reread it tomorrow, cringe, and repost. Right now I just want this up!

Also, I know most of you guys probably already know this, but for anyone who didn't read the manga, I forgot to say it last time: in the anime Mifune has brown eyes, but in the manga he has blue. **I've decided to give him blue eyes in this story.** Minor, pointless, but there ya go. xD

* * *

So, as promised, here are the **individual thank yous **to my wonderful reviewers. These responses are for **last chapter. **I will write out more responses for **this chapter** tomorrow!

**2random4words: **Omg, thank you so much! I'm happy you thought so!

**Crona Katartist: **That's absolutely no problem at all. And WAH! I'm so excited you actually care enough to comment on April! x/D It will be explained in due time! As always, thanks so much for reading.

**Kitori-xxx: **Ah~ha! You really think evil!Black*Star is mature? Well, thank you! (I hope he's still in character, though – or as in character as he can be given this AU). And OMG! Thanks so much for commenting on April-chan~~~LOL, I suppose being a redhead (or half a redhead) could definitely be a reason! And hehe, I'm glad you were excited about Mifune's appearance. I'll admit, Soul would have been interesting – but given his motivation (or lack thereof) in this story, he'd probably be quite furious at me for putting him in that situation. :P

**Aras the crazy writer: **Woot! I'm so honored you think evil!Black*Star is cool! He'd be quite happy to hear you say that, ahaha~~and thanks so much for being okay about the delay; I totally understanding procrastinating on papers, too…do that myself… ^^;

**SkaleFlapper15: **I'd love to say you did – but your review on the chapter after this seems to suggest that it didn't tell you! Ah~I wonder if Black*Star and Mifune are aware of who won~~~ xD Thanks so much for replying so loyally, as you always do. ^^

**AkiraWolfWriter888: **Omg / I love you so much. I was so angry I had to chop this chapter, but you still manage to say such nice things! I'm so honored that you're interested in the B*S-Tsubaki plotline. I have a lot of stuff planned for it. B*S has a long way to go, that's for sure. *blush* I'm so glad you said I kept Tsubaki in character! I have a bit of an OCD thing about keeping everyone as IC as possible. And WOOT! Omg, thank you SO MUCH for noticing Hiro! That part was sort of a semi-quasi-almost attempt at humor just because Hiro always amused me~ xD

**DeadlySereneGrace: **I promise to update as soon as I can! I'm actually writing about DTK right at this moment! (Well, I'm writing this to you at this moment – but I was writing about him and I will return soon!) Thanks for being so passionate about this story!

**Mars Death:** Omg, thank you so much for the compliments on the metaphors and similes. And heh, heh, yes, even though considers this chapter "seven" and the next B*S installment "eight," in reality, the chapter updated on Sunday is "chapter eight" since the first chapter is really just a prologue – so VIC~TORY! Chapter eight will be about DTK! Also, I know you write this on your next review, not this one, but I'd love to read your story!

**GrossGirl18:** Wow! I'm so glad that you like the story enough to have partial parts! I promise they'll be a lot more of B*S-Tsubaki and Thompsons to come.

**Gen. Malaise: **Thanks so much! While I was writing last chapter, I kept twitching about whether I was making B*S conceited enough or not. And oh, don't worry, you aren't the only one who thinks he needs to be knocked down a few pegs (although, yes, it does have unfortunate side effects for Tsubaki). If you read this chapter, I hope you are pleased with it!

**TheSilverbloodAlchemist: **You make me blush so much! You're phenomenal! Omg, I'm so honored you liked the part about the food~I enjoyed writing it, but I kept imagining people simply skipping it for being wordy or pointless. And thanks for being so understanding!

**:** Thank you so much! I'm so honored! I hope you enjoy this chapter!

**Bma925: **Please, don't worry about it at all! I hope you just aren't confused from accidentally skipping some chapters. Ah, I love Mifune too, I was so heartbroken by the manga! T.T His ending in this fanfic is still murky – i.e: I have no idea what I'm going to do with him.

* * *

_"Samhain stomped a great foot which tread a thousand bugs in the grass, trompled ten thousand tiny soul-beasts in the dust." _

- Ray Bradbury, _The Halloween Tree_

**Chapter Seven: BLOODY Stars Hate Faerytales? **

The sand skittered and gusted all about their ankles, hissing in the cool darkness like prickle-teethed demons. Not so far away, the shambling outline of Death City hulked, a pockmarked, crumbled smear on a moonlit horizon; its lights fizzing and popping pathetically in the impenetrable blanket of the desert night. The moon poured its filthy, bloodied-yellow rays over the demented turrets, the seesawing roofs and cracked cupolas: a city of corruption lost amidst the blind nothingness of everlasting sands and shades.

Black*Star dug his heels into the cold, gritty earth, fancying the miniscule moon mimicked his momentous grin. His weapon hunched besides him, wilting on her knees, near-drowning in the winds and grainy soil. She resembled a wraith, some sort of weeping, bloodless, torturously beautiful banshee, captured in a swirl of ebony hair. She shivered and spoke not a word – a silent blossom that calls only to the grave.

The ghostly stranger surveyed him, his wheat hair adrift in the black air.

"Let's see, then," he finally murmured, his voice hoarse, and his blade slit silver in the darkness.

Black*Star snarled his smile, the hard jade of his eyes blazed in a hellish starlight:

"You're gonna regret challenging the almighty leader of STAR," he grabbed forcefully at a fistful of Tsubaki's hair, yanking her bowed head toward him, "Transform, BLOODSTONE."

The girl only crumpled further beneath his touch, blurting a series of useless cries to the howling night. Her voice, sweet and strident, her words, delicate and defiant, rankled deep in his core, so that the flat ends of his nails crushed powerfully past her dark roots to her scalp. The girl gasped at what must have been a familiar pain by now and bowed still lower, as she should before his unspeakable greatness.

But now was not the time for her to be stricken: now was the time for her to _obey. _He could not understand his opponent, who stood so somber and silent before him, poised in battle, but refusing yet to strike. It was as though he was waiting, waiting with an irritating and obnoxious patience for Black*Star to prepare himself. The act recalled ancient and trite things to his bloodstained mind, things as stale and pathetic as fabled honor codes, where dual adversaries respectfully declined killing one another until both were ready.

Black*Star did not believe in such nonsense. Those that were weaker than him must be crushed; it did not matter when or in what manner they were exterminated – and _everything _was weaker than him. The entire world writhed as pitiful, fleshly, simpering, mewling creatures about his feet, wormlike when compared to his colossal immensity, subhuman when pitted against his divine and everlasting gloriousness. Why should he waste time on a mockery, waiting for some foul, sniveling little invalid to stumble to its feet before he crushed its skull? Why should he squander golden minutes of his priceless lifeless for the pretense of a fight from a lowly insect?

And he did _not _need this man to wait for him: Black*Star was _always _prepared. Black*Star _never _lost. Even in the realm of deep and unfocused slumber, the gang-leader knew he was not vulnerable: for even in dreams, he could massacre the stick-thin man before him. He could snap the frail, skinny neck without use of his hands, he could dislocate the jaw without moving more than an inch; he could burst his frenetically, insignificantly pumping heart without drawing a single breath.

The fact that the stranger waited was _insulting. _Didn't he realize who his enemy was? Didn't he realize that Black*Star did not – and never would – _need _Tsubaki?

No, no, he was merely trying the weapon's abilities out in pure curiosity, not necessity: this swordsman was nothing more than a test run for his newfound tool, no true threat – not at all.

Still, the combined offense of the man's "honor" and the BLOODSTONE's piteous wailing mounted to a deranged and insurmountable bloodlust – burning an inferno's stars against his eyes – until his mind blistered in an endless, depthless, thoughtless pit of roaring RED fire –

"I – said – _TRANSFORM – BLOODSTONE!"_

The depths of his indescribable, omnipotent, mammoth soul heaved in glory: Black*Star touched down to his flaming core, recalled his limitless power, and sent a brutal shock of it through his fingertips and into the quavering girl. He felt his soul slam against hers like a cyclone ripping through a garden of frail-petaled, scentless flowers: felt whatever fight lingering in the smallness and delicateness of that unperfumed soul shudder feebly and collapse beneath his immensity.

Black*Star never did any sort of Soul Studies; no one in this world did.

He knew his soul existed because it was what he used to kill people with.

Tsubaki screamed and convulsed and became a KUSARIGAMA.

Black*Star clenched at the clatter of chains, spreading the sharply-hooked ends between both hands; her weak soul hummed beneath his calloused palms, insignificant. He grinned at the swordsman, his gaze imprinted with stars, his shredding smile full of the thirst for blood.

This had all happened in a mere moment, but in that split second, the stranger had shifted positions.

"That girl…is your weapon? You're forcing a BLOODSTONE to kill for you?"

"What's wrong?" Black*Star growled, and he ran at the stricken man, the pain of Tsubaki's soul singeing painfully at his palms; he ignored it, "Gonna _cry _about it?"

There was a shrieking collision when the stranger deftly deflected the KUSARIGAMA's chain with a flick of his blade.

"Despicable demon," the man called, spitting the plant from his mouth and readjusting his position, "Would you honestly enslave another human being? Is it not cruel enough that you murder yourself – must you dirty innocent life as well? Would you honestly drag another down into _hell _along with you?"

Black*Star was momentarily blinded by the blurring sheen of a sword. It seemed to come from all directions, seeking his flesh – even once nicking his cheek. He needed to stay on guard just to avoid the blows, channel all his energies into subduing Tsubaki's soul. But the weight of the KUSARIGAMA was growing uncomfortably heavy in his hands – and its surface burnt hot, hot, hotter, gnawing impossibly through his gauntlets – he managed to zigzag the chains around the man with impressive skill, but the sound of the girl's soul shrieking was more than vaguely annoying –

_No, no, NO. I'm BLACK*STAR. I NEVER lose. I NEVER fail. _

_The BLOODSTONE will do whatever I want it to – I can control her easily – and this BASTARD is weak – I can kill him, I can kill him easy – I'll SLAUGHTER him –_

He could smell his flesh burning and he did not care.

The chains circled all about the slender man, despite the desperate screams of a flowery soul, fast and deadly. Black*Star moved with incredible speed, his eyes unbridled stars, his own soul an endless chasm of raw RED. He imagined the man entrapped, choked by the chains, begging, pleading – a worm wriggling on his hook – Black*Star jerked his arm to yank the KUSARIGAMA tighter, his face contorted in the glee of his success –

But the swordsman was not there.

There was a resounding _clang_ as the chains knotted around blade of the stranger's sword.

And the blonde, lank-haired stranger was balanced _atop_ the tiny hilt of his weapon, his eyes blank, ice-pick chips as they studied the murderous boy before him.

Distantly, Black*Star felt a phantom-scream of Tsubaki's soul, resounding through the KUSARIGAMA, into his peeling RED palms, tugging like weak, tiny fingers at his core.

_Shut up – shut up – SHUT UP, BLOODSTONE –!_

He would defeat this man. He would, _he would. _

Black*Star would shatter all his bones in a single blow; he would gut the skinny little stick of a body with a solitary jive of his weapon; then he would drag its brutalized remains through the desert, leave it to roast putrid and foul in the sun, a desecrated dinner for the vultures – all except for the head, which he would order April to dangle before their cave, lolling languidly from milky-wheat locks –

"And is this all the infamous leader of STAR has to show me?"

_– he would – _

"After all your boasts?"

_– he would – _

"This is the great Black*Star?"

– so why the _hell _was his heart –

The cerulean eyes bored into him, serene, serene, unafraid.

– _so why the_ _f –ck was his heart – _

_…unafraid? _

– _WHY THE F—CK WAS HIS HEART BEATING THIS WAY? – _

The man flipped deftly off his hilt and landed expertly away from the clutches of the KUSARIGAMA. Somehow, with some bizarre, complicated twist of the wrist, he managed to slip his sword free from Tsubaki's net of chains. His lank hair was mussed, he sported a light bruise by his chin, but these were his only souvenirs of the battle.

"Put the girl down. Fight on your own terms. She has nothing to do with this."

_I'LL KILL HIM – I'LL KILL HIM – I'LL KILL HIM – _

Many victims shrieked about his ungodly cruelty, but what Black*Star experienced now seemed beyond inhumanity: his soul was a deep, dark, livid pit, a lashing, burning, roaring inferno of lightless flames, a roiling vat of wrath and bloodlust and infinite power barely contained by divine sinew and glorious flesh. His mind was vacant, full of RED fields, his eyes riddled with the image of the man before him: he saw and heard and thought and felt and _became _nothing but a blind massacre.

Tsubaki must have felt his bloody influence. Ghostlike, her soul wept and shuddered beneath the force of his, a forgotten scattering of petals in a vicious cyclone.

_{…stop – it – ple-ease…stop it…}_

But Black*Star did not hear or recognize her soul; she might have been a wasp, her words no more than a distant and irritating buzz. It was only her physical form that did more than irk him: the KUSARIGAMA literally seared into his palms, so that the smell of cooked skin thickened the air; her weight was unbearable, pulling at his extraordinary strength, clawing at fine, sculpted muscles –

He would _not_ let go.

_I _WILL_ KILL HIM – I WILL – I WILL –!_

And with sheer, unbreakable willpower, Black*Star gripped the KUSARIGAMA, channeled his unbridled essence through his split, oozing hands, and coerced the person to become a SHURIKEN.

He was ABOVE GODS, after all.

He could do it.

_"WHY?" _the shout tore itself violent and hoarse from Black*Star's throat, "I'll do _WHATEVER _I want with her! _You_ can't order me around! _You _can't defeat me! _I've surpassed GODS! I'M BLACK*STAR!" _

And with all the strength imaginable, he whirled the huge, black-marked SHURIKEN through the midnight air, completely undeterred by the phantasmic echoes of the girl who was a BLOODSTONE who was a weapon. He threw it despite his bleeding, burning palms, despite the despicable pounding of his betraying heart, despite the sagging breath in his lungs, heavy as stones – and it soared through the air with perfect dexterity – its blurred edge slicing toward the expressionless face of his victim –

_And the swordsman dodged it. _

Tsubaki swung back toward Black*Star, natural dynamics, against her willpower.

He sidestepped her and let her tumble into the sand.

There was a hiss as the pearly white grains rose up in the air, enveloping her body in the collision. She was no longer a SHURIKEN, but a girl once more, dragging herself feebly and desperately to her knees, retching up vile crimson dribbles into the desert ground. Her skin was slick and cold as a drowned corpse, haunted, haggard, her tangle of black hair like a matted cocoon.

She was small and insignificant and he needed to break her more before she understood his bigness.

_Fine. _

The man had become foolishly, erringly, preoccupied with Tsubaki's illness. The crystal-blue irises no longer dug into murderous jade, but now drifted and fixed entirely upon the pathetic heap of scentless petals, a shivering camellia.

_He doesn't want me to use my weapon, huh? _

_[KILL HIM – MASSACRE HIM – SLAUGHTER HIM –]_

_…I don't need her. _

And Black*Star charged.

An opponent should never draw his attention away from him. _No one _should. Black*Star was the center of the universe, the epiphany of everything, the omnipresent danger that stalked every human being – and this man was about to learn why.

In that single, fleeting, vulnerable moment of distraction, Black*Star charged: a smear of blood and sweat and blue spikes and he rammed his blistered palm into the small of the swordsman's back and his mouth snarled the victory words –

_"BLACK*STAR – BIG WAVE!"_

The enemy stiffened, white hair drifting like the stuff of a spider web; then he crumpled forward.

_"N – no! NO! You – you KILLED him! How could you KILL HIM?"_

Tsubaki came flying, a frail, tattered blossom, mouth speckled in claret-rich vomit; stumbling on long, elegant, trembling legs; and she flung herself at him, wailing, beating unnoticed fists at his pounding chest.

"How could you? How could you? _How could you?" _

"Shut up," he snarled, and within him was elation, a bloodied, howling, insatiable elation, and it poured from his mouth in demonic peals of laughter, combusted in his eyes as hell's stars, wrung from his every pore the most complete and undying ecstasy he had ever felt – he clutched at her throat, drawing her face inches from him, "He challenged _my leadership," _the smile wired on his jaws was a devil's, "He _had_ to die," the fingernails scrapped somehow possessively at the sweet pallor of her neck, "And I should kill _you_ too! How _dare _you get in the way of my bigness! _You nearly cost me the match!"_

But the BLOODSTONE wept before him without a word, silent and tragic as a fallen camellia blossom.

"…the only reason you failed…_is because of you." _

The cold encased him entirely.

"No."

It happened before thought was possible: the swordsman rose like an unburied corpse reanimated, a forlorn shape bathed bloody in the luminescence of a cracked and grinning moon. The shadows crawled about his face and masked it entirely, shielding his expression in a gauze of nighttime, so that only the eyes pierced, vivid ice chips surrounded by the gossamer-pale drifts of hair – the eyes of certain judgment.

His back was scorched, blackened, _scarred, _but still he moved – a wounded angel – and still did his hand clench the glistening sword, shining bright and clear as a diamond in the dark – and it swung with a final and damning verdict –

Somehow, unbeknownst to Black*Star, Tsubaki was tossed out of his range of vision –

There was a swirl of lavender-black sky and faint dots of stars and the overtly large moon _(not nearly as big as him) _arching over Black*Star as his back slammed into the sand and the sword slammed into him.

Somewhere, a flower screamed.

RED splattered a sleek silver blade, divine blood, glorious; the sword plunged itself directly through his right shoulder, pinning a demon to its exorcism. The sands chittered and swirled about the impact in an unholy dance, white phantoms on black winds, their touch like rough, scratchy kisses at his neck and face. Black*Star lay there, blank, desolate, lost within a pool of his own crimson, the entire world nothing but a small, small place spinning meaningless in chaos and his mind nothing more than a yawning gray meadow that went on and on and on and on forever –

The man hung over him, an angel leaning on a sword, "Do you know what it means to be a BLOODSTONE?"

_– and on and on and on – _

"You call yourself strong; above all the others; but you live the easiest and simplest life among us all."

_– and on and on and on – _

"This rotten world is full of murder – no one questions it, no one even thinks to fight it. It's the BLOODSTONES that struggle, BLOODSTONES that fight, BLOODSTONES that surpass all others by defying the odds and living morally in an immoral land. Could you have surpassed these odds? Have you even thought about the sort of strength that takes?"

_– and on and on and on – _

" That BLOODSTONE you force to partner with you is infinitely stronger than you."

_– and on and on and – ? _

"Do you know the fable of the RED ANGEL? It must seem a fable to you. You are too young remember it; the day the RED ANGEL came…"

The sword bit deeper into Black*Star's flesh and the demon refused to scream, refused to scream, _refused to scream – _

"At the DEATH OF DEATH, the moment the SHINIGAMI reign fell, an unspeakable RED light passed over everything, over everyone…except a chosen few. These few people had the strength to resist the RED ANGEL; they alone were capable of fighting an indestructible enemy. These people became the BLOODSTONES that you now abuse."

_HE WOULD NOT SCREAM._

"…but the RED ANGEL judged you weak; it passed easily through you –"

_HE WOULD NOT – HE WOULD NOT – HE WOULD NOT. _

"You claim to have surpassed gods," and a righteous hand wrenched the weapon free, so that gobs of blood soared and winked in the moonlight, "But the SHINIGAMI fell long before you were old enough to challenge them. You did not surpass the RED ANGEL and you certainly did not surpass gods."

_"You're – wrong –!" _a strangled and insidious whisper.

_HE WOULD KILL, KILL, KILL. _

"Am I?" The heavenly blade skimmed the throat of a demon, its glittered edge reflecting a torrent of bloody stars, "Listen to me, Black*Star of the STAR gang: I am the samurai, Mifune, bodyguard to the Mistress Angela. Your members have looted our fortress and frightened my mistress. I will not stand for this behavior," the tip of the sword hovered, near, nearer, tempting, though it did not once kiss his pulse, "But I refuse to murder a child, no matter what path he has taken."

With the swish of a slender arm and the flap of a capacious brown coat, Mifune removed the weapon and turned his attention fully upon Tsubaki. The bloom was bent and shaking, pale fingers pressed over a gaping mouth, the eyes dark glass painted in the tears of the innocent.

"And you. You don't have to stay in this place. Come with me."

He was sinking in that endless gray meadow, swallowed up in dry colorless soil and the distorted faces of a multitude of tattered dead, nameless, thoughtless, pointless, the forsaken things long since defeated. That endless gray meadow – it was a land of skulls – and he was disintegrating into it – absorbed in the pathetic carcasses of all those he ever killed, all those he ever destroyed; now their decaying fingers pulled at ears and stuck their festering nails into his mouth – drawing him under, under, _under – _

_They wanted him to become one of them. _

"You're – wrong…" the blood spilled around him like an unholy RED robe.

"You're…_WRONG…" _

Tsubaki had not moved: she still sat crouched on the hissing sands, destitute and broken, enshrouded in inky black ropes of hair.

Black*Star dragged himself up through the leering skulls of the dead, the cold pulling fingers of his victims, the hollow sockets attempting to stain and lessen the undying immensity that was him – he unearthed himself from the endless gray meadows of defeat and stood up on sound feet, snatching wildly, insanely at his weapon.

_"I DON'T KNOW WHAT CRAP YOU'RE LYING ABOUT, BUT I WILL ALWAYS BE THE STRONGEST! I'M BLACK*STAR! YOU COULDN'T POSSIBLY UNDERSTAND MY BIGNESS! I'M BLACK*STAR! YOU'RE WRONG – YOU'RE WRONG – YOU'RE LYING! I WILL KILL YOU! I'M BLACK*STAR!"_

He trembled, dizzied by the lack of blood, the uneven floor shifting beneath his weight. He stumbled, but the blaze of his beliefs sustained him, bolstered him, burned through him in an absolute inferno of blind rage and crazed bloodlust: a glaring star that roared with its own fire, hotter than hell's wrath.

Mifune started, "Let her –!"

But Black*Star pressed Tsubaki against him, wicked in the blood-grinning moon:

"You go anywhere near her and I'll blow off her head with my BIG WAVE. You think you're fast, but I know you aren't _that _fast. She'll die first."

The samurai's gaze frosted over him like a sheet of ice.

"I'll come back for her."

"And you'll _DIE."_

The idea would not come to him until many hours later. After his unfortunate victims, those unsuspecting lesser members of STAR, dropped at the hands of his wrath; after the ghost of the samurai's lies plagued and shrieked and haunted him enough to destroy over half the headquarters; after he screamed and raged and cursed to the madly smiling and insignificantly bleeding moon – _so much, so much smaller than he – _after the mindless slaughter and meaningless demolition that did nothing to sate the permanent shame that was _his first and only defeat – _

– after April had locked up Tsubaki in rooms where Black*Star couldn't kill her –

…the idea came to him.

_A SHINIGAMI. _

_That's all I need – a SHINIGAMI. Mifune doesn't believe I've surpassed gods? I'll find a SHINIGAMI, even now, when they're supposed to be dead. I'll find a SHINIGAMI and I'll kill it and then I'll kill Mifune. _

_And then no one will ever question my bigness ever again. _


	9. GOTHICK Dolls and Spiderwebs?

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Soul Eater or "Girl's Not Grey." Both are owned by their respective owners: Atushi Okubo and AFI.

**A/N: **Okay, so, technically…this is **NOT LATE** because it is **NOT YET MIDNIGHT **where I am. However, this is the closest I've ever cut it to **just making the deadline**…I feel shameful…T^T

I'm pretty sure I said that this chapter would come early today. I'm **SO SORRY** it didn't – I had totally forgotten about the **hour change** over here – and it **totally** messed up my sleeping schedule and that's the basic reason why it's later than expected. That – and the fact that the Black*Star chapter lasted MUCH longer than I thought it would. It gave me less time to write this.

Still…I'm cringing now because last chapter was delayed and this was just under the wire…

But as I promised: this update **IS **on Sunday – _**so I have not broken the deadline. **_

I thought about sending out P.M.s about it not coming out until late, but I figured I should only reserve that craziness unless the chapter was totally delayed until Monday – and I **REFUSED **to let that happen.

Anyway, I feel the end of this is incredibly rushed…it frustrates me. And I'll probably have to repost it error to weed out grammatical errors, but I wanted to make sure at least **some **of you got to read this!

And although refers to this chapter as "nine," since I call refer to the first chapter as a prologue, this is actually **chapter eight - and its about Kid! **So woot! VIC~TORY.

* * *

**To thank my gorgeous and phenomenal reviewers: **

**Kitori-xxx: **Ah~ha! Yes! Sadly, it's true: poor Kiddo, everyone is after him. I'm going to admit, this story is becoming DTK-centric **very** fast…not exactly a good thing for him, since I tend to torture my protagonists. And WAH! Haha, I'm so honored I saved you from boredom! I know the feeling you describe exactly; so glad I could alleviate you from it! And as for B*S – let's just say it's going to be a long and difficult process with his development, but Mifune will **definitely** be central to it. xD

**DeadlySereneGrace: **You're so sweet! Please, take your time! This story will be up for ages for you to read whenever you want! I hope you enjoy this Kid chapter! And ah~ha, both your predictions are plausible.

**Mars Death: **I'm honored as always by your heartfelt and detailed words. T^T! Lol! I'm sure you have the guts to read this chapter – I'm actually a little frustrated with it (still thinking not enough action actually **happens **in it). But I'm getting there. Slowly. T.T As I said last chapter, I would be **honored **to read your fanfic! The only reason I have not reviewed yet is due to business – but I **promise **I will soon!

**SkaleFlapper15: **Yikes, indeed! My sister says he's a total bastard…LOL. And hm…well, I suppose they'd both have different answers, depending on which one you ask. I'm inclined to think Mifune won, but Black*Star would definitely find some way to twist the events and make it seem as though he had the actual victory, I bet. Thanks so much for reading, as always!

**Sathreal: **And it's not going to be good! Thanks for reading!

**2random4words: ***blush* I'm so honored you say that! I've always found that whole "path of a demon" concept interesting – and while I feel the show/manga hints it – he of course never actually takes that path. I've always felt in the context of a "godless" world like this, those darker sides would come out, so I wanted to explore them. I'm so thrilled you're interested in it!

**: **Hehe, I love Mifune with blue eyes too! That's why I needed to make them blue ;P And yes…the anime **did **change a lot from the manga. I have mixed feelings because I actually enjoy both, but I don't blame you for feeling that way! And OMG *blush!* thank you **so, so much! **I'm so honored I have phenomenal people like you to read this story!

**Thepheonixblade: **Thank you so, so much! I'm honored you enjoy the story and I promise more to come! About B*S – I really don't want to give anything away – all I can say is that I've got a lot of painstakingly long and difficult character development planned for him. He won't just stay exactly as he is now. Don't know if that gives it away or if it's too vague – but again, I'm so honored you read!

**Van the Key of Lain: **And I love you too! Omg, thanks for the compliment on Mifune; I was so frustrated that I wouldn't portray him correctly…particularly his dialogue. And I love how you pick up on stuff about B*S – you really look deep into the characters! I'm honored! Thanks for calling Tsubaki strong; I'm trying very hard to get her particular brand of strength out – she's def different from Maka. And yes…ah~poor Kiddo, indeed. I tend to abuse my favorite characters – and you've totally summed up the multiple horrors he's dealing with in this story. As always, thanks so much for reading! I always love your beautiful and detailed reviews!

**Aras the crazy writer: **Unfortunately, you will have to wait until next week – since I don't reveal it in this chapter! But I hope you get something out of this one! I'm so honored you read! Thank you!

* * *

"_This art does drown."_

AFI, _Girl's Not Grey _

**Chapter Eight: GOTHICK Dolls and Spiderwebs? **

He hung desecrated and beautiful from his throne of withered flowers.

The dust of rose petals tumbled listlessly from silk-ebon locks, raining as dried perfume down his undone collar, settling ghostlike on his exposed pearly flesh. The shadows filtered, thick and sludge-like, through the half-closed curtains, dancing subtly with yellowed-silver patches of moonlight. The interplay of shades and luminescence made strange patterns on the wall, wreathing the living porcelain doll in fluctuating stripes of light and darkness. The lips were parted, lifeless, and the flame-golden gaze lay down, down, on the clean floorboards, studying the scatter of flower petals.

Why did no one clean them up?

Bits of thorn and leaf and flimsy petal – why did no one clean it up?

They formed a pathetic little mess on the floor, random, unordered; a chaotic sprawling of dead plants. Why did no one clean it up? Such an unorganized pile, it caused the nausea to crawl up into his throat, bitter and blood-tasting, heavy in his slack mouth. Why, why, did no one clean it up? He could not bear to look at it, but when the pale lids shuttered the hollow eyes, he saw it still, the unholy mess – all so arbitrary, unsystematic, _haphazard._

Oh, oh, those disgusting, revolting, festering _weeds_ – oh, he could not _stand_ it – he could not even _breathe._

_Why did I not die? _

His skin felt unclean beneath the filmy prince's clothes he wore, loose and supple and flowing. He still sat, as he always sat, upon some chair, with the little linked chains at his wrists and ankles like glistening white vipers. His body was frail and frigid and lifeless and his mind was full of the nothingness that was a pretty and inanimate toy. Utterly motionless, silent and somber in the shadows, he drank dismally the dim air and wondered idly over his distorted existence.

_Why could I have not…died then? _

And the flowers. Why did no one clean them?

_When my supposed 'father' fell… _

And _that man's_ smile in the dark; the haunted presence of his eyes, always watching; his uncouth and unwholesome touch, so possessive, _so violating – _

_ …why did I live? _

Death the Kid did not know.

He could not remember his father; he was not entirely sure he wanted to. He was the reason the boy now sat in this chair, drowned in dead flowers, the object of sadistic pleasures; the reason he was so often trussed up like a doll and showcased onstage like a thing without thoughts; the reason he was ogled and manhandled and abused and stolen. All those leering smiles and grotesque hands, all the shame and lifelessness of the BLACK MARKET, all the heartless asymmetry that stalked his agonized existence – it was all because he was his father's son.

_But it's not his fault…not really…whoever he is… _

No, it was no one's fault, really. It was nothing. This entire world was slantwise, a cracked and unbalanced reality tilted wretchedly toward wickedness, and there was no one truly to blame it on. The DEATH OF DEATH had been vile, detrimental, but pointless. No one knew or understood why it had happened. Like the unexpected eruption of a volcano, it was sporadic, meaningless, unplanned, but its effects left deep wounds on the unsuspecting planet – wounds that did not heal, but festered to subterranean lacerations left permanently poisoned.

There was – no point to it.

No point to it at all.

He was living in an asymmetrical universe.

_I want to die – to die – TO DIE. _

And pretty little dolls, fingered and coddled and stroked by grotesque OWNERS, did not possess the abilities to save a broken world.

He stared out unfeeling and looked for the symmetry that hid in small corners.

There was no creak as the shining oak door opened, gliding smooth and soundless on its hinges, revealing the furbished corridor beyond.

Death the Kid thought of smiles in the dark and lustful eyes that watch and did not have the energy to feel afraid.

But it was not Noah. It was Gopher, the disgruntled and despicable "maid" of the house, charged as usual with the repugnant task of feeding him. He appeared especially malevolent today, the cutting sheen of his purple eyes particularly knifelike, the frigid white face as pinched as a skull atop his effeminate neck. Even the slick wavy curls, half-spiraling about his nape, seemed to bristle with loaded negative energy.

He swept easily into the room, somehow regal in his velvet vest and puffed shirt cuffs, brilliant gold embroidery stitched and looped painstakingly over midnight fabric. Death the Kid, drowning in the silent molasses of unfeeling, the still, still dust of lifelessness, let his eyes drop as fallen suns to the intricate patterns. The needlework was skillfully rendered, balancing loops and turns and curves, evenly dispatched throughout the vest, mirroring one another lovingly on left and right side. Perfectly sewn, perfectly symmetrical.

_Symmetry, symmetry, symmetry. _

What did it matter – if symmetry existed?

What did it matter _– his eyes, his touch, his smile in the dark_ – if there was this symmetry, why did any of that matter?

What did it matter – if this whole world rot straight through?

_I believe in this symmetry. _

Gopher slammed the tray down on the rosewood table with earsplitting force.

Death the Kid did not stir, did not look, did not breathe.

In the hazy fog that is the thoughtlessness of porcelain dolls,

_Why won't he…maybe he'll…maybe he'll clean the flowers up… _

…_please, please…_

Dolls sit pretty and unsmiling, all dressed up sweetly in milky open shirts, raven hair and feather-soft lips.

…_let him clean those damn petals…_

"I learned something about you today," Gopher leered over the polished steel water pitcher, the flat little plat with the crust of dried bread that would be forced, nauseatingly, down his revolting esophagus, "I learned something very interesting – _doll."_

Beautiful and pointless, meaningless, the living plaything remained motionless in his throne of thorns and roses, basked in flimsy RED petals, unhearing, uncaring, unfeeling. He watched the symmetry on the boy's vest, a luscious garden of reflective design, and he himself was vacant and hollow, hollow, hollow.

"Aren't you listening to me?" the boy-maid snarled, and suddenly his pale, fiendish fingers were at his throat, and Death the Kid was being shoved back into the sea of crimson flora that spilled over his chair, choked, scratched, abused, "Are you even _listening _to me, you _stupid doll! _You're _nothing! _Do you understand that? _You're nothing!"_

And – what _is_ a SHINIGAMI?

"You're just a _doll! _A stupid – useless – meaningless _toy!_ You aren't alive! I don't know why Noah-sama loves you so much! You aren't worthy of him! You're junk – trash! – _cheap porcelain trash!"_

But Death the Kid was empty as the blows rained down. He was limp and utterly still, even as the mean fists pummeled him, even as the screams and the curses and the threats poured upon him in stringent depravity; even when Gopher pressed him purposely into the prickly nettle of rose stems: he did not move, he did not cry, he did not even blink. Hollow, hollow, the porcelain thing sat there, without the motivation to feel pain.

Gopher dragged a few furious breaths through his teeth, fingers clenching and unclenching at his cold throat.

"_Heh…" _ the wavy-haired boy nearly gagged on his chuckle, turning up as that burned as loathsome coals to the somber doll, the grin scabbing at his mouth somehow impish, "That doesn't hurt you…huh…? Still think you're better than me? Still think you deserve Noah-sama? _Heh. _I'll teach you…I know what hurts you…you aren't valuable enough for Noah-sama; I understand him better…"

A hand, crooked with hatred, clawed at the tray on the rosewood table, snatching up a knife used to cut bread.

"See this?"

Death the Kid was unaffected.

"Look…" Gopher's breath was low and faint and insidious as a ghost, almost unheard in the throes of the night, murmuring prophecies of murder in a graveyard. "Watch this…"

He grabbed a brusque hold of Death the Kid's chin and tilted it sharply, so that apathetic yellow eyes trailed listlessly over the silvery water pitcher. The doll could see his reflection in it, blurry, indistinct, but very much there: a luxurious toy clad in loose Victorian wardrobe with the ruffled collar undone, revealing a slice of pearl-colored flesh, framed by trailing strings and silks and bows. The RED roses lay all around him, crushed and withered, unbearably chaotic in their arrangement, tightening his stomach to knots.

And, of course, the set of white stripes.

Death the Kid would do _anything_ to rid himself of those grotesque stripes.

"Watch."

Gopher held the little knife almost lovingly, touched it carefully to a spot just below Death the Kid's eye, and slowly, slowly, slid the blade down his cheek. The living doll was inert, unresponsive, watching as the RED trickled from the smooth incision, lovely as scarlet ribbon on the unblemished moonlight pallor.

For a moment – nothing.

Then, beneath the recesses of dust and death and lifelessness, Death the Kid realized something.

_Chink, chink, chink, _went the slender chains, as his frail wrists jerked involuntarily against them.

"Oh, yes," Gopher breathed, a black-winged grotesquery, digging the now RED-slicked tip of the blade deeper into the laceration, drawing a neat, anguished slice down the snowy cheek. But it was not the pain that bothered him, "It hurts you, doesn't it? Doesn't it _hurt?" _Like a talon, the knife dove into perfect skin, ruptured sweet pores in a burst of fresh crimson; _and it was just on one side – on one side – ONE SIDE, _"Break, little dolly. Why don't you BREAK? BREAK! BREAK! BREAK!"

_Chink, chink, chink, _went the slender chains, and Death the Kid could not breathe.

The blood webbed down the left side of his face, a pulsing, scarlet worm, and the rosy sheen of RED dappled only that _one side_, dripped in fat ruby droplets on only the _left bit_ of the loosened collar, pattered as liquid rose-leaf-petals on merely the _left pant_ –

_I want to DIE – to DIE – to DIE!_

Why had he not died?

Why had he not died?

Why did he not _DIE? _

"BREAK, BREAK, BREAK!"

Did he not realize that he was already broken?

Nausea clotted in a sticky and repulsive glob at the back of his throat, panic shuttered his vision in an explosion of blinding white stars. No breath left the cold, cold lips, but the body wracked in tortured spasms, spontaneous and instinctive, without the register of an empty doll mind. The eyes were a doll's – glassy and fixed and unblinking – _and WHY did he not mark the other side? – _and they stared onward, and forward, and vacant – _and WHY was the right side of his face not marred also? – _and there was truly nothingness inside him, a dim, dismal, somber, pretty plaything – _oh why, oh why, did he not DIE? _

_ Symmetry – symmetry – SYMMETRY – _

"Stupid DOLL! Why won't you BREAK? You're _nothing _but –"

_A DOLL! _

_ A DOLL! _

_ A DOLL!_

And little girls are charming torturers, really.

Much more sophisticated than boys with shining black curls and pointy little frowns –

"GOPHER!"

And abruptly, it stopped: smiles in the dark, festering and bloody; all uncouth fingers, touching; that was Noah, here, in this room, his dark eyes creeping – _looking. _

The mocha-colored hand smacked hard at the pale face, and Gopher soared into the floorboards, vomiting his apologies, the purple eyes suddenly moist and diffident; his mouth kissing at the fine soles of a rich man's shoes.

"N – Noah-sama! I'm – I'm so sorry! So – so sorry! I – I just – _N-Noah-sama_ –"

Noah strode further into the chamber, bristling, his gaze livid with a cracked and deformed greed, "Do you have any idea what you've just _done? _You've _damaged _it! What if it doesn't _heal? _It's beautiful face – you know nothing of true beauty, Gopher! Nothing!"

But Death the Kid had returned to someplace small and dim, someplace faraway. He heard his OWNER's voice, hoarse with greed, hushed in horror, but he did not see him, so quarantined was the doll within the vague and lightless recesses of his mind. The hand crept at his bloodied cheek, and the stroke was possessive, violating, but Death the Kid had reverted to the stillness and coldness and breathlessness of porcelain, and he would not see, would not hear, no, no, no, he would not even _feel _the crass and calloused fingertips at his face –

"Y – yes, No – Noah-sama –" Gopher's sobs might have been on the other side of the world.

There was hot breath all by his neck,

"Go get bandages and cleaning ointments. _Now. _Before it scars."

This would happen again, Death the Kid knew.

His head tilted languidly, ebon hair awash, and Noah's mouth was dangerous, deceitful, murmuring so near, so near, "Did he hurt you, my precious doll? Did he try to break you…?"

_But I am already broken. _

The doll knew this day would happen again, these horrors, again and again and again.

_Stop. Pause. Rewind. _

Backwards and forward look the same.

_Repeat. _

Again.

And again.

And again.

_Go back, go back, go back._

* * *

_The sky is RED that evening. _

_He doesn't remember. It's so hard to remember, really, and there's no true point in it. He's small, for sure, and he's precious, perhaps; but mostly, he's just young. He might be content – who actually knows? _He_ for sure doesn't – but it's so hard to remember, and the important thing is that the sky is RED that twilight. _

_Up, up, up, in a place with a window that stares out into the clouds, that's how high up they put him, and why wouldn't he stay in a chamber lifted way above Rapunzel's tower? Seems natural, right then, right there; he's very special, you see. Daddy's little boy – so he gets the room that twists up into the sky. _

_RED sky. _

_He doesn't know. He doesn't remember. It's very hard to remember, you see. You really can't blame him. Dolls aren't made to remember, they're all cracked and fractured, full of sodden memories, half-remembered stuff, thrown away. So he can't really make it out and there's no real reason to look back anyway, so why should he? _

_Wait. Stop. Rewind. Go back. _

_Where's he going back to? _

_Ah, yes. The sky. It's RED that night and he's tiny and blessed and oh so innocent, left alone in a room that peers out into candy-colored fields of crimson sky. All smiling. All leading toward the sinking sun. Symmetry, although he doesn't know its name yet. Symmetry, symmetry, symmetry – it's the elixir of life, you know, it's the gospel truth. He knows it, even back then. _

_But the sky's all dyed in blood and people start screaming. _

_He doesn't know how it happened. I've told you, he doesn't remember. Not a thing. Not. A. Thing. Daddy's little boy, but he doesn't remember. _

_Gothick dolls and spiderwebs, all messed up. You honestly expect him to remember? _

_Someone slings him over his shoulder, crude, rough, uncalled for. Maybe he cries out for his father, maybe he doesn't. He's special, see? Daddy's little boy, but he doesn't really understand it, and now he never will. _

_The sky is RED and he's crying and their screaming and a whole kingdom topples to glitter and ashes and fine dust: falls down, down, down, into the mud of certain murders. _

_This whole thing, really, is nothing but a faerytale. It's just nonsensical. _

_Phantasmic. _

_But then again, he doesn't really remember. _

_Maybe it's all just a dream. _

_Maybe this never even happened. _

_Not at all. _

_Wait. _

_Stop. _

_Rewind _

_Go back – back – back – back – _

_Problem is, there's no where to go back to._

* * *

Death the Kid woke up with the astute knowledge that something was changed.

His shackles rattled about him as he half-lifted himself from the downy cot he was allowed for slumber: a pile of satin cushions that specifically recalled the resting spot of a rich man's pet. The steel collar was ice about his throat, glistening a potent gray in the shadows, fettering him to smooth wall behind him by an ample length of chain. He did not know what made him move, still and lifeless and silent as a doll, tied up in a web of silver manacles – what could possibly have triggered motion in him?

Only that something seemed…changed.

He did not remember his dream, dim, surreal, confused thing that it was, like a wailing apparition in the back of his mind. Hollow as he was, it did not matter much if he did or did not remember it, though a vague impression of it infused the air with a RED-soaked bitterness.

_What's…going on? _

The doll's eyes shone listlessly through the shades like dual apathetic suns.

_Why…am I awake? _

But then, why did porcelain dolls sleep?

It was then that he heard it: a dull sound from many floors below, the sound of multitude of crashing feet, a trampling chaos, the muffled cacophony of myriad voices. He thought he heard something smash, faraway, and more screams, some shouted orders – it was a faint and dismal nightmare of mingled noises, a senseless bedlam tumbling and shifting and rocking and raging floors and floors beneath him – he could almost sense the hellish energy of it, rising up through the layers of the house, exuding from the crowding black walls as a terrible, scentless, sightless smoke – unseen, but poisonous, real.

_Someone has heard that a SHINIGAMI is being kept here. They've come to sell me back to the BLACK MARKET. _

And Death the Kid knew it because he had been stolen and sold back before.

Again, and again, and again – the existence of a doll was a monotony of fast cash and worn stages and buyers with sly smiles.

_I'm to go back to the BLACK MARKET. _

It was something expected, something known, something understood. The plaything had experienced it many times before; he knew he would continue to experience it, on and on and on, until someone thought to permanently crack the porcelain of his skin and shatter the gold glass of his eyes and his outside would finally mimic the state of his inside: the utter vacancy of death.

Yes. This was all very expected.

He felt nothing as he waited for the thief.

What Death the Kid did _not_ expect was the dull _tap, tap, tapping _on the night-washed window – set at the far end of the room – nor did he expect what he saw through the thick and crystalline panes – the shadowy figure framed in total moonlight – the ghostly, silver, yellowed-white luminescence of the bloodily grinning moon – oh, no, no, he most certainly was not expecting _that – not that thing standing outside the window. _

And the doll fought against the panicked tides of blackness that threatened to consume him.


	10. PLEASE Enjoy the Freak Show?

**Disclaimer: **Atsushi Okubo owns Soul Eater; Simon Holt owns _The Devouring. _What do I own? Zip.

**A/N: **Another chapter that is – quite literally, just under the wire. Sorry guys, things have been crazy lately; horribly busy week, incredibly busy weekend…

I'm not going to say that I'm disappointed with this chapter, because I always say that about every subsequent chapter I put up, but if you were to ask me if I'm satisfied with this, my answer would be – "Of course not." Once more, I had to cut this chapter short due to time limit. The next chapter should pick up where this left off. I know this ends quite abruptly.

**To thank my gorgeous and glorious reviewers: **

**Sathreal: **Ah x3 Yes, I am a meanie who often indulges in cliffhangers! As for pairings – ^^;; While there will be lots of pairing going on here, some pretty traditional, others not so traditional, I've been reluctant to tell anybody them so it can be a surprise!

**DeadlySereneGrace: **xD!

**Gen. Malaise: **Ahaha, Liz and Patty would certainly be frustrated with DTK's lack of – life, lol. I'm glad you're interested! I assure you lots of development will be going on here concerning that trio.

**Souliel: **I LOVE YOU. I'm going to send you a private P.M. to thank you more properly and thoroughly. (Probably tonight!) I'm sorry I haven't had time this week to respond to it earlier :(

**GrossGir18: **Fave – fave – favorite author? I'm HONORED! I'll gladly accept your hatred! As far as entering an OC – I was be honored and I'd love to – but unfortunately, at the moment I don't really have any OCs except April, who I don't think is very conducive to those types of (amazing!) fanfics. She's – weird. But I'll spend time thinking about it and if I come up with an OC, I'd LOVE to submit him/her!

**: **I'm glad you found it interesting! Ahaha~I'm so overjoyed I got a fangirl scream out of you! I promise you that Liz/Patty will be showing up pretty soon. Though, I am gonna be on Maka for a bit…

**ScytheMeister:** I'm so honored and I'm so thrilled that you found this fanfic! You really like the world? I'm so glad – ever since I started watching SE, I wanted to do something like this. OMG. Masterpiece? You make me blush. Thank you SO, SO much! I love writing about Kid's situation so I'm so honored you enjoy reading it!

**Kitori-xxx: **Ahaha, you'll find out soon enough! I'm gonna just be spending a little time with Maka, Soul, and Crona first. And wahh ^/^ thanks!

**2random4words: **You – you do? I'm so thrilled! I love writing about Doll!Kid too. And thank you so much for your comment about the writing. You have no idea how much that means to me.

**SkaleFlapper15:** I'm so honored that you're excited about the next installment! Although this~er~doesn't answer your question, that one will be answered soon!

**Aras the crazy writer: **WOOT! I'm so glad you're excited! You will find out pretty soon!

**Bma925: **I'm so glad!

**AkiraWolfWriter888: **Wah, I've always loved Mifune, but I feel so honored that I actually made you like a character you hate! *_*! Thanks so much, that really, really means a lot! I swear I'll keep developing Tsubaki! I'm really interested in her plotline here and how her relationship with Black*Star will progress. I'm so honored that you like the part about Black*Star forcing his wavelength over Tsubaki. It was – strange to write, since they resonate so well in the canon universe. But interesting! I promise that more Liz/Patty scenes soon!

**Minx The Shadow Thief: **I'm glad you like it x3 Yeah, it's a little strange to write about him this way, but I felt it was believable to see him take "the demon path" in a world that quite literally has no morality. He's not a stagnant character, though; he'll develop! I'm so glad you think it's good! Thanks for reviewing!

**Mars Death: **Please do not worry about it at all! I still need to review your story! I have NOT forgotten about it – I'm just – going crazy, it seems. T.T You'll see who's at the window pretty soon! I'm glad you're excited!

**Cholleca: **I'm so honored that you think the characters are intact and that you enjoy the writing style. You really have no idea how much that means to me! THANK YOU for commenting on my sister's artwork too! She really, really appreciates it – as I appreciate your thoughtful and considerate review!

**Adell568: **Thank you for calling it well-written! And I'm honored you think everyone's IC. It's very important to me. I'm sorry you find some of the descriptions confusing :( I know I can be wordy, it's just my style, but I'll try to pay more attention to it. (Although the beginning of this chapter is supposed to be a bit convoluted…) At least it conjures the proper atmosphere, though! xD Ahaha, its cool you mentioned the cap locks. It's certainly weird, but it's a weird story, so I felt that it fit it well. There is sort of a secret mystery going on concerning why certain words are in all caps; I'm drawing attention to them for some reason. Thanks so much for your long and thoughtful review!

* * *

"_Screams and wails poured forth from the evil tent. If she went in, she would never come out again. Inside was pure madness."_

Simon Holt, _The Devouring _

**Chapter Nine: WELCOME to the Freak Show? **

Shhh – shhh! Can you hear it?

The doors are about to be open.

And they only open one way.

He had a sallow face pressed up against the cage's bars and he could taste its corrosion and dankness and water-stain; like metal poison in his mouth, sick, so sick. And _he_ was sick. _Oh – so – sick_. This place was cramped and hot and lightless: he could smell the mildewed straw beneath his feet and feel the live things that slunk and festered and crawled within it, scurrying over his bare, blue toes.

Oh, oh, and that was something he couldn't deal with; he couldn't deal with it at all. It was too dark to see what crept, feather-light and filthy, over his naked feet, and he did not know how to respond to something he could not see. Should that make him feel more or less frightened?

_I'm afraid, I'm afraid, I'm afraid. _

But of what? Was it those things he couldn't see – those things that moved only in the dark – inching over his toes in the straw floor?

Or was it the hand that shoved him up against the bars, the voice grunting profanity in his ear?

Or was it the many sounds in the shadows, the slow, forlorn, ragged breathing, as if of somethings only half-alive; the distant and almost unheard creaks of creatures shifting about in their cages; the dulled and pained whinny of some living spectacle considered part-monster, sobbing just before the curtain rises; the step of the ringmaster outside, smiling with cherry lips and cracking at his whip; or was it something else – something – something _deeper – something inside? _

_ I can't deal with this, I can't deal with this; I can't deal with this again – _

It was certainly true. He could not. A bubble was swelling in his chest, blacker than his blood, a bubble swollen on disturbed and fraught panic. Oh, oh, oh, what could he _do – do_ – _do? _The bubble expanded in the rail-thin chest, bursting past his lungs, crushing his ribcage, spreading up to clog the measly, contracting throat._ Swallow, swallow, swallow._ And oh, oh, oh, he was _afraid – afraid – afraid –_ and he didn't know _why – why – why –_ this whole situation was simply impossible to deal with – impossible – _impossible! _

Impossible as the terror clawed, blacker than his blood, up his throat and into his mouth, bitter as bile.

_But I can't deal with throwing up right now. I can't. _

"Come on, Crona," the one who forced his head against the bars now snarled into his ear, "I'm not staying here any longer. They don't feed me enough! And the food is awful. Either you do what you're supposed to do or I'm going to rip your nose off –"

"I don't think I'd be able to smell then, though," he mewled against the rust of his cage, "I don't think I could deal with that, really. It might hurt and I wouldn't be able to smell. How could I deal with that?"

_"Do as Lady Medusa says so we can go home!"_

He thought about amber eyes, old enough to have seen the world's first murder.

_Shhh – shhh! _

_ Listen up. _

_ This is what my mother taught me. _

_ In the dead of night, while the gravestones grinned their crumbling namesakes, she taught him how to - _

_And the moon laughed back in bloody RED torrents. _

"I – I can't. I don't think I can do it. I'm not ready."

But the doors were about to open.

They only opened one way.

People could come in, but he could never, never get out.

But then again, there were no doors, not really. It was all a bizarre and whimsical metaphor. There were no doors in a circus. Not literal ones, at least. The frothy white canvas, scotched and scarred and smudged with the soot of hellish travels, was simply peeled back to create an entryway. A luminous glare poured forth from the entrance, drawing the strangers into its blazing folds, and they all came flooding, smelling of popcorn and excitement and cruelty. He did not know how to deal with it, all those eyes, blank and watching. And those mouths that leered and jumped and twisted with certain awe, certain _revulsion._ Mobs of them, hooting and gawking and jeering, some of them sticking their fingers through the bars, poking him, scratching him; and the things that screeched from their lips – _the things! _And _the ringmaster! _All jolly, all fat, while the sea of eyes roved over him, tittered in delighted disgust – oh, oh, how did he _deal _with _that? _

And here the ringmaster went now, he could hear him:

_"WELCOME TO THE FREAK SHOW! WELCOME TO THE FREAK SHOW!"_

He extracted his face from the bars of his cage and fell back, moaning.

Somewhere in the wet, chilly darkness, he heard another FREAK shift in the crate just behind him, a huge, grunting, hairy thing, prized for its enormity and hideousness. He shivered at the sound of it, but lay cold and inert on his moldy bed of straw, letting the monster in his spine shriek and curse and beat at him with iron fists. A few soft pleas for the abuse to stop struggled to his lips, but they died on the shadow-thick air, like brittle bones falling to nothingness.

Again, he heard the FREAK behind him, walking about its cage. The metal boxes were packed so closely together that he could feel the reverberations of its huge feet padding on the floor. And when the thing leaned its hulking, lopsided head against its own bars, when the large, rubbery lips pulled back, when the song boomed mottled and distorted across the midnight area, he could clearly make out those words he did not want to hear –

"Did you ever think when the hearse goes by –" it always began the same, the fellow FREAK's song, "You may be the next to die!"

He convulsed and pushed himself upward, slipping on mouse skeletons, convulsing, choking, nearly vomiting –

_"No, no, no! Stop it, stop it! I – I can't deal with that song! I don't know if I've thought that! I don't know what to do if I did!" _

And the ringmaster stood just outside this room, basked in the buttery spotlight, bellowing the chocolaty-rich words to the gaping audience –

_"WELCOME TO THE FREAK SHOW! WELCOME TO THE FREAK SHOW!"_

No one listened. No one ever, ever listened. He huddled on straw and fungus and crunching rodent bones and screamed without thought while the FREAK and the ringmaster's voices rang and collided and rebounded off one another in some jumbled melody for the mad –

_{am i mad?}_

"The worms crawl in – the worms crawl out –"

_"WELCOME TO THE FREAK SHOW!"_

"They eat your guts and spit them out!"

_"WELCOME – WELCOME!"_

"One little worm that wasn't so shy –!"

And the crates were being wheeled out into the roaring lights and thunderous cries that were the main ring; he cringed beneath the tumultuous ocean of eyes that assaulted him with their stares, the jocund shrieks of horror at the sight of him; his starved body wracked with spasms, the unseeing fog of terror obscuring all thoughts, the fear jangling about in his black blood like a physical agony –

"Went in through your ear and out through your eye!"

_I can't deal – I can't deal –_

_I CAN'T DEAL WITH THIS!_

Oh, oh, oh, and he was the main attraction; why was he always the main attraction? They crowded all around him, a riotous mob of onlookers, spitting laughter and snorting sniggers. A medley of hands stretched toward him, malignant as bats; shaking the rust-eaten bars; hooting their dribbling hysterics at him. He stumbled back into the very corner of the mobile cell, colorless in the brilliant lamplight, the tremors piercing the frail body like needles. Oh, he was afraid, afraid, afraid; oh, he just couldn't, couldn't, couldn't –

_I'm scared…I'm scared – of everyone…_

"Come see the thing with the monster in its spine! Come see the boy-girl FREAK with the monster in its spine!"

_Haha, haha, _the crowd was one big smile.

The cage rattled and quaked and he screamed, screamed, screamed: what could he do? How could he deal with this? The faces all blurred into one gawking eye and the voices became an indistinct chorus of unending hilarity. He did not know how to react to them. He tried to imagine himself locked up, confined, separated, safe within a personal circle completely impenetrable, but the rotted bits of food soared past the barrier of his thoughts and splattered against him anyway. He curled up tight, stick-thin legs against a stick-thin chest, face buried into his knees, rocking to and fro to a made-up lullaby he did not remember because he had never heard it. He knew no lullabies, none at all; none, none, none; and how did the song end again? The FREAK's song, drifting through the foul bars of the cage behind him?

'_Do you ever think when the hearse goes by –'_

A lullaby about corpses and worms and rigor mortis.

"But is it a boy or a girl?" a pinched woman with a ratty net of hair shrieked, suddenly, "Is it a boy or a girl? Why can't we find out? A boy or a girl –?"

_Haha, haha, _the crowd was one big smile.

Why – why was the ringmaster unlocking his cage? No, no, no, he couldn't deal with that – certainly not _that – _the portly man dragged him stained and freakish from his crate, a shivering thing in a drab black gown, the bubblegum-purple hair mussed and the expression contorted. Why was this happening? _Why, why, why?_ He balked at the influx of people, and he couldn't deal with them, he couldn't react, he couldn't breathe; all those jeering faces and him quaking in the burning spotlight –

"I propose we find out!" the ringmaster boomed, and the crowd heaved its approval in mottled cheers, "Why shouldn't we FIND OUT?"

He writhed and twisted and plead and died in the sweaty grip of the smiling man. The spotlight was unbearably hot, searing into the cold gray skin; the pavilion spun into a streaming river of colors, blue and yellow and green and RED, while the gasps tottered and shook as fitful ghosts from his lips. But he could not get away, he was trapped here, he was trapped and they were going to –

"Why don't we FIND OUT?"

The hand extended toward the coarse fabric covering his chest –

_WELCOME TO THE FREAK SHOW! WELCOME TO THE FREAK SHOW!_

How – how did that lullaby end again?

What was the last line of a FREAK's song?

Torture erupted in his back: a splitting, ripping, tearing pain as the monster pushed itself up unbidden through his spine, melded through the soiled clothes, an ugly and distorted limb that leered at the masses. Like a mammoth shadow, lurching from the malnourished misfit, and all while it happened, his limber body bended backward and forward, the cries tore anguished from his lips –

How did the song go?

_WELCOME TO THE FREAK SHOW!_

_ Shhh –shhh! _

All a haze: a blood-RED haze: all confused, all horrifying. He did not see and he did not hear and he did not think. There was a hell inside his head. Bleak and dim and endless, blacker than his blood – that was the hell inside his head. It was eating him up. _The hell inside his head! It – would – swallow- him – WHOLE!_

And the monster in his spine was a sword in his hand and it had a ruby mouth that opened and then it screamed – and it screamed – and it screamed – and suddenly the ringmaster's head was spiraling through the air, blood flailing behind it like twisting scarlet ribbons – and the body was dancing blindly in the ring, ah, ah, who's the main attraction now? – blood spurting from its stump – and his white, white face was painted RED, RED, RED –

_WELCOME TO THE FREAK SHOW!_

_ WELCOME TO THE FREAK SHOW!_

_ Shhh – shhh! _

_ Don't you remember? _

_ This is what my mother taught me. _

Her eyes were older than time, old enough to see the world's first murder.

_What was it my mother taught me? _

"Hey –" he did not recognize the voice that slurred from his throat, the smile that pulled taut and mad from his mouth, "My blood's black, you know."

Amidst the muck of human chaos, he remembered the last line of a lullaby that was really a FREAK's song:

_So do me a favor – and DROP DEAD!_

An entire circus was massacred that night.

* * *

Maka bounded down corridors, a labyrinth of dusty white halls and somber locked rooms, all identical, all leading to the heart of someplace grim and still and lifeless.

Her footfalls and the distant clatter of the boy ahead were the only sounds to stir the cobwebby silence that was this place. It was dead, dead, dead. The floor was dirt-encrusted and the walls reared like pocked phantoms, old and peeling, in clear signs of decay. The air tasted of sawdust and poison in her lungs, sagging in her throat; the stillness of the asylum was unsettling. There was no life, no breath at all, but the complete and total immobility made her imagine mad-things in the shadows, the ghosts of gibbering patients, the echo of the insane that must have screamed and languished behind bolted doors – unheard, forever unheard; still unheard now, in the utter stillness that is death.

As she ran, the decrepitude increased: fissures crept their way across the ground, creating makeshift cobbles; holes peeped from the walls like hollow, staring eyes. A couple of doors hung sad and aslant on corroded hinges, but many more were icy sheets of metal, securely shut, sleeping beneath funeral shrouds of dust. Everything was colored gray here; gray and brown – the suffocating dry-gray of quiet motes – and the wretched rust-brown of dried liquid. The lampposts overhead were large, morbid, dying contraptions, either flickering feebly or cold with lack of illumination.

"Wait – _wait!"_

If there was one thing Maka knew she could do well, it was run really fast. Her wide strides easily covered the serpentine hallways, galloped swift over the weird, rickety staircases that hid in dark places. She was gaining on the gangly figure before her, who did not even stop to throw his gaze over his shoulder as he fled.

She was gaining on him – and suddenly she was tripping over a rotted threshold, falling into a bizarre room that shimmered with convoluted glass objects. It was scantily dressed, bare but for a little bed with no blankets and steel legs, and the long table full of funnels and test tubes and bottles and other strange bits of quasi-scientific apparatus.

The boy crashed headlong into it – sending bits of glass soaring – but he ignored the shrieks of broken equipment, ducking behind the metal bars of his bedpost, shivering convulsively. Maka felt a hard hand squeeze around her heart, nearly bursting it, as she took in the pitiful form, bloodless and shaking, the fear in his eyes manic.

"Please," after all that running, she was not even out of breath, "I'm not going to hurt you. I just want to talk to you."

He was something scared and spindly, only half a person, withering,

"You – you can't come in here! This – this is – is _m-my_ place! He'll – He'll get angry if – if you come in here!"

Never had she seen someone who had victim written so plainly on his face, in his words; the title was carved into the trembling figure, so deeply that it bled. The anguished hand gripped still tighter at her heart, crushing it entirely.

"Who? You mean the doctor downstairs?" she took a step forward and the boy fell back against the wall, near-fainting, "It's alright. I'm not afraid of him," she meant it, too, "Anyway, he's not here. He's talking to my Papa downstairs."

The boy was a huddle behind the bed, quaking, quaking,

"You – you can't come in here! It's – it's m-my place! I – I can't deal with you coming in here!"

Maka walked over the glittering debris of glass, its musical crunch pricking at her eardrums. The hand at her heart was now a talon, plunging painfully into her chest, piercing bloody tissue and wrenching forth the still-beating organ.

"Don't be silly," her voice was soft, soft as a cloud doused in a springtime morning, "There's nothing to deal with. It's just a room, just a doorway. I can come in. And you're going to be alright. Here, look: I want to give you something."

It was so odd. Despite the agony in her chest, the words flowed smooth and calm from her lips, sweet as satin; as though she always knew this moment would come, as though she were prepared for it. She dipped steady fingers carefully into her pocket, pulling out a crumpled iris flower, its purple petals rich as a royal plum in the drab chamber. She had cut it from the potted plants she grew on her windowsill, a small emblem of beauty in a world of desecration – and now she held it out to the shuddering boy before her.

"See? It's a present. It's for you."

He reeled back a bit, his initial reaction a yelp of panic, as if expecting it to be some torture device. He gawked at the benign truth, the tears dripping like dull marbles from limp lashes.

"I – I can't deal with that. Nobody's ever given me a – a – a present before."

The smile that turned up her lips was a shaft of sunshine, peeking gentle and bright from a nest of thunderclouds,

"I'll help you."

She took a few tentative steps forward, careful not to startle him; she knelt down slowly, so that the pure evergreen of her gaze rested delicate on the dark misted eyes of the boy. She touched his hand lightly with her free one, noting the iciness of his skin, and gradually, calmly, quietly, peeled back the trembling fingers. She placed the bloom tenderly in his white palm, then closed his hand over the violet-petaled gift, so that her fingers briefly enclosed his.

"See? There you go. That wasn't so hard, right?"

And the boy began to sob.

Maka knelt there, her smile like the gloss of sunlight, dappling the shades of midnight with a golden glow. She simply smiled as the skinny boy cradled the flower in his seemingly paralyzed hands, the hunched shoulders heaving, the dim pallor of his cheeks rained in the slick deluge of emotion.

She waited for some time, as he stammered and sniffed about his inability to cope with so many tears; she knelt there patiently and battled the desire to collect him in her arms and rock him close, to hold him against her anguished heart and murmur that even if the world was a nightmare, she would make sure he still had dreams. She knew such contact would only further overwhelm him, but she could not help skimming a finger beneath his eyes, catching a glistening of tears.

"Are you alright now?"

"I…I ca – can't deal with crying so much…I – I've never cried so much…"

"Then you can stop, if you want. It's all up to you."

He turned drowned pupils to her, "W – Why are you being so – so…nice to me?"

There was that talon in her heart again, shredding it to pieces.

"Because I want to be your friend," steadily, steadily spoken, "My name is Maka. What's your name?"

She already knew it, but she wanted to hear him say it.

"C – Crona."

"It's nice to meet you, Crona."

"I – I – it's – it's –" he glanced down fitfully at the flower in his palm, then pressed it against his chest, nodding nervously. She fought the desire to hold him again.

Maka adjusted herself so that she was sitting on the wooden floorboard besides him, heedless of the legions of glass and dust and rats and spiders that made the ground their fortress, "Didn't you want to come downstairs with everybody else?"

Crona seemed fascinated by both her and the little bloom. He kept delicately tapping its long-tongued, purple petals, as if frightened his touch would wither it, before jerking his gaze up rapidly to meet her eyes, as though she was a phantom soon to dissipate into smoke, then nothingness.

"I'm scared – of everyone."

The frown that pulled at her lips seemed to shutter the sun, "I know this world is scary, but you don't have to be afraid all the time. I'm your friend. I'll protect you."

And Crona looked up at her, peered unsure and fragile through the choppy row of bangs, his lips utterly motionless in some indescribable response, his breath seemingly stopped on the thin gray mouth. Something swam in the dim, moist, vulnerable depths of his eyes, something Maka had yet to see in him; it was weak and small and frail and questioning – a tiny flame almost quelled in the night – but was it – could it be –

Was it trust?

Then he gripped his hair and started screaming.

"Crona?" Fear blossomed in her chest, chill and venomous, arching throughout her body like the myriad branches of a tree, shooting up on fast-forward, the alarm protruding from her mouth in a shriek, "Crona – CRONA?"

Because his body was writhing now, twisting, this way and that, that way and this, while the skeletal fingers knotted the tufts of pinkish hair and the mouth gaped open in an eternal cry of agony – and something bulbous was emerging from his spine, a dark, shadowy, humanoid shape, ripping steadfast through skin and bone and tissue and cloth, rising gigantic from the small boy – a monster with Xs for eyes.

Her mind shut off.

"I've had enough of this touchy shit!" the thing without a mouth sneered, and it tipped itself forward, kneading humungous, chalk-colored hands into fists, pounding them against Crona's temples, "Who the hell do you think you are, ugly? Protect Crona? How could a weak, small fry like _you _protect anyone?"

It could speak.

It could speak and – it was insulting her.

Maka blinked, dizzied, too encased in numb disbelief to respond properly,

"How – _what _are you?"

Crona moaned, wilting, as if crumpled beneath the weight of the demon in his back. His eyes had a glassy sheen to them, a stricken look; his fingers clutched uselessly at the purple flower in his hands.

"You don't know who I am? Idiot! I'm the DEMONSWORD – Ragnarok! You should fear him; I could easily eat you…though, you don't look tasty at all –"

A powerful flicked almost unconsciously at Crona's nose, causing the boy to whimper as RED began to trickle from his nostrils.

This seemed to awaken her.

Maka stood up, her jaw clenched like an iron-trap, her eyes rounded severe and harsh on the beast, jade-edged daggers, digging into his soul with a glare like a death-knell.

"Don't you _dare_ hurt him! It must be hard enough with you inside his body! _STOP IT!"_

The DEMONSWORD guffawed its derision, but it was Crona who answered, the thin body wracked with tremors, the eyes panicked, the skin smothered in a dusky pallor –

"You – you hate me now!" he seemed to topple into the monster that rose from his spine, choked by it, smothered, chained by it, "I – I'm a – a – a – FREAK! I – I know! P – Please, don't throw things at me – please, don't throw things –!"

"Crona – _Crona!" _

_Throw…throw things? _

It all happened very fast. The grotesque demon was laughing and Crona was crying and Maka's mind was afire with a righteous halo of flaring, burning fury. The sole intact bottle was swept into her hands without thought; it collided against the bald, ebony head of the monster; and before the response could come from it, before it could wreak the dozen hells it promised to unleash upon her head, her slender fingers were cupping sallow, streaming cheeks, smoothing back tears; her eyes were a whole forest of evergreens, teeming with green life, staring against eyes suddenly as pale and white-blue as glaciers.

"Crona – Crona – _shhh, shhh," _and despite her bursting heart, despite shivering and stammering and sobbing of the famished boy before her, she skimmed petal-soft lips over his cheek in a brief kiss, "I will _never _think you're a FREAK. _Never."_

The boy was stricken, seemingly drowning in the throes of something he could not understand.

And Maka folded the fluffy, pink-lavender between protective fingers, "I promise."

Distantly, outside the hazy realm that was this dream, she heard her father calling.


	11. MEETING Between the Whore and Macabre?

**Disclaimer:** I own nadda.

A/N: *creeps in slowly* I feel I'm taking the walk of shame here. I promised this chapter would be up on Saturday…well, it's currently 2 A.M. over here, so I totally **failed**... **I'M SO, SO SORRY** *falls prostrate in bitterest shame*

I had every intention of getting this up by eleven tonight, but then life got in the way. It seems to be doing that lately. And sadly, and honestly, I'd really rather be here than in life, as life consists mostly of the stress that is schoolwork. I'm really holding out for this semester to end – I need the summer and the free time that comes with it.

Anyway, once more, I'm SO SORRY. I really thought I could get this up in time – I'm actually a little frightened the next chapter might not be up in time (Sunday) because I still have to finish an essay…but I'm thinking I can still get it up by midnight. I'm PRAYING. Because I really don't have the face to delay again. And the next chapter will actually be interesting (unlike this one) so – I better get it up. At the very least, you guys deserve an interesting chapter. Thanks for being **SO PATIENT** and **SO UNDERSTANDING** about last week's lack of update. **I LOVE YOU ALL! **

**Once more, I'm so sorry about the lateness here…oh, I feel so revolted with myself…**I hope it's semi-decent.I swear, this will **NOT be something that recurs **a lot…things will get MUCH better once school ends.

* * *

**To thank my divine reviewers: **

**Luv . kagome: **First, I gotta apologize to you – whenever I post my chapters, your name is deleted in my message to you! I think thinks it's a website address or something, due to the period. So I tried to put spaces in it this time, so it doesn't happen. xD More importantly: OMG! Thank you SO much! Honestly, I was incredibly thrilled when you said the beginning reminded you of an actual episode. That's a truly beautiful compliment and really touches home. I'm thrilled. You are so phenomenal. I'm so lucky to have you as a reader!

**Aras the crazy writer: **Thanks so much! Your dedication is as amazing as ever!

**Crona Katartist: **You – you did? *blush* I'm extra-ashamed that this chapter is late; I hope you enjoy it somewhat! It's characters are not ones I usually focus on, but they state some much-needed information that will help move the plot forward. You are utterly amazing, btw. I can't believe you like this story so much! Readers like you always make it worthwhile. I was totally going for a victimized Crona, so I feel honored that you mentioned that so explicitly. You – you liked my DTK chapter? WOOT! I'm so thrilled you have a favorite chapter! I don't know if I should say this, as the author, but DTK's chapters are usually my favorite to write…xD I'm so beyond honored with all the gorgeous things you've said to me…you have no idea. You are a big motivator for writing this story!

**Kitori-xxx: **I'm so honored you actually read this, even with the threat of school work! Tee~hee, I could couldn't help it, Crona in the circus just…fit. Like some sort of warped puzzle piece. And in reference to your P.M., don't worry about leaving longer reviews. I love all your reviews, short or long. I'm just thrilled that you read at all!

**Vain the Key of Lain: **I'm always so thrilled by all your detailed comments! Haha, this one actually **was** done on purpose! I'm so thrilled and honored you caught that! Yes, DTK is a pretty doll that rich criminals buy to pet; Crona is an ugly spectacle the lower masses find entertain in mocking. Both objectified, but in vastly different ways. You picked that up instantly! I'm so honored you read. I'm really glad you enjoyed Maka's bit; I'm excited to have Crona interact with the others as well…

**2random4words: **Yes, poor Crona indeed. : ( Thanks for reading!

**SkaleFlapper15:** Thanks so much! I'm so honored you think they're in character! I can't wait to hear more from you : )

**GrossGirl18:** Woot! Yes, thank God for Maka!

**Thepheonixblade: **I'm so honored you liked the chapter! And thanks so much for the construction criticism. Both Crona and DTK are the two characters who have the most unstable mindset, so maybe that's why you thought they were similar. While neither of their chapters are totally stream of consciousness, they both are trying to mimic an unstable mind, therefore they both come off disjointed, rambling and jumbled. While I can't necessarily change this, because Crona is definitely very unstable, I'll try to differentiate them more…somehow. The only thing that really alarms me is that you could have confused Crona for DTK. I tried to characterize them as very differently here. DTK is very dead, hollow, empty; Crona is fraught with terror, agitation, and nerves. While the opening liners of last chapter was supposed to be vague, so it would be okay if you confused it with DTK, I thought that the "door only opens one way" would be an indicator that we had entered Crona-land. As far as the repetition thing goes…I never exactly meant for that to be specifically geared toward DTK. It's sort of just my style – *sweatdrop* – I know I've used it with other characters too in different chapters. But then, I guess I use it more with Kid, since the repetition usually denotes some sort of trauma, and DTK is definitely traumatized. I'll admit, I never really paid attention to it, but the idea you with connecting three-word-repetitions to DTK is absolutely awesome because he hates odd numbers. Still, I can't really cut it totally off from Crona, because he repeats things so often in the show. Whoa. This is way too long. Still, you've definitely given me a lot to think about. Thanks for the review : )

**Souliel: **As always, I LOVE YOU. You are utterly amazing in every shape and form. Thanks for the gorgeously detailed response. I'm honored my writing has managed to touch you in some way. I'm so thrilled to have someone like you reading!

**ScytheMeister: **Thank you so much! You're reviews keep this story going!

**AkiraWolfWriter888: **I'm so honored that you liked the poem-parts. I always find it fun writing about crazy people, since I get to play around with things like that. Tee~hee – I just had to put in the gender issue! It's just so…prevalent to Crona. xD Thanks for reading, as always!

**Rockergurl95:** You are very inspirational! Thank you so much! You have no idea how much your words mean to me.

**Hempel's Raven: **Oh dear, I ADORE YOU. I need to send you a private message to thank you properly, because this space will NOT be enough. I just have to say thanks so much for paying such close attention to the characterizations. I swear I'll give you a more specific response later on…I just have too much to say to put here! Just know how much I appreciate your gorgeous responses.

**Gen. Malaise: **Ah~ha, the infamous Crona-gender debate. xD I don't blame you for not reading my author's notes, because they are tedious, long, and boring, but I actually mentioned this there. The truth is…only Okubo really knows what Crona's gender is, and he's not saying. The closest he's ever gotten to touching on Crona's gender is that it is "unknown" or "undecided" or something frustratingly vague like that. A lot of people have your opinion and believe that Crona is a girl for the reasons you've stated in your review. I, personally, believe that Crona is male. I could list my reasons for believing this, including my own personal counter-attack on the "dress" and "curves" thing…but in all honestly, I really, really, really **DO NOT **want to turn this story in a roaring debate on Crona's gender, thus I'm not going to get into it. Everyone has a right to their own opinion. I know a lot of fans personally feel 100% sure that they know Crona's gender, but in all honestly, it's impossible for **anyone **to be **definitely** right when the author himself refuses to admit to Crona's gender. I know nothing I say will ever convince you that Crona could be anything except female; I'm certain that I will not see Crona as a girl unless Okubo himself says that Crona is. So, please, please, please, let's just agree to disagree? I do not have the time or the energy or the desire to start debating this in either reviews or . If it seriously bothers you that Crona is interpreted as male here, you totally don't have to read the story – I won't be offended at all : ) Otherwise, I just want to thank you for handling it all so calmly, instead of writing "ZOMG!1 YOU'RE AN IDIOT!" like less mature people might have. As always, thanks so much for reading this chapter, even with the disagreements!

**Mars Death: **You are seriously the sweetest person ever. Thank you so much for your beautiful words on the descriptions. In a weird way, it almost makes me want to cry, because I've gotten a lot of previous readers who tell me I use to much description. Thanks so much for your wonderful, wonderful words! I swear I'll finish reviewing your story! And thanks for the congrat! xD

**Miki Okinawa: **I'm so honored by your beautiful words. I'm thrilled you found some parts eerie/creepy, because I was definitely going for that – and I hope you enjoy what comes next!

**Penny: **I have way too much to say to you…I'm going to have to P.M. you, if you don't mind me being the creep that I am. I am so entirely and totally and – exceedingly THRILLED that you have commented on this story. I was so certain that anybody who looked at A Story With No Name was off this website by now. I saw your phenomenal review to that story – but, ah, I can't start this here, since it's just too long a story. I just want to say that your words mean more to me than you'll ever know. I'm so beyond HONORED that you actually looked up a show just to read this story…wow…you've gotten me all emotional, I'm not even kidding. T.T I really can't tell you everything I want to say here, but I want to let you know that if anyone – ANYONE – even ONE person still wants to read my totally ANCIENT Luke story, I will certainly go back to it.

* * *

**Now, finally, into the actual story: **

"_Dear Marni, I'm so sorry…_

_Can you forgive me for this?" _

Nathan, _Repo: The Genetic Opera _

**Chapter Ten: MEETING among the Whore and the Macabre? **

"Wh – what? Stein? That's absolutely _out_ of the question! You are _not _dissecting my baby girl!"

The redhead was fraught, cowering by the ancient staircase, all tight pants and loose ties. Stein stared languidly, somewhat acidly.

"Why are you here, Spirit?"

The father looked back at the doctor, looked and saw desolation.

Oh yes, Stein _was_ desolate.

The gray hair hung like a limp shroud over his face, near-colorless; and the face itself was a dreary patchwork thing, haunted, with somber eyes wreathed in shadows, shot with an unsettling vagueness; the skin was a death-pallor beneath the perfect stitches marching across his flesh. The lips were thin and wiry, draping frowns over his cigarette – the fingers were gaunt; deceptive things – the glasses sat straight and too-clean on his head, flashing peculiar sheens in the half-light. And the lab coat fell stark and almost dusty, crumpled over his tall body – like the wrappings for a corpse.

Indeed. Franken Stein was a living corpse, all stitched up pretty.

The phantasms of madness shrieked about him.

_But he's always been this way…so why does it seem – stronger now? Could it be…this world's affected him too? _Him? _DWMA's strongest meister? _

_But then…Stein's always had his weaknesses…_

"I know what you're thinking," the MAD doctor breathed in snakes of smoke, "And you're right, of course."

Spirit stiffened, wrought in certain horrors. His mouth puckered in some pathetic attempt at response, but he felt nearly drowned in the bland glare of his supposed friend.

"_Ah – uh – heh…"_

His throat gurgled in a complete lack of articulate sound.

"…I _did _replace your spleen with a gorilla's fifteen years ago. But don't worry. It seems to have held up surprisingly well."

This incredulous statement was met with an incredulous silence.

This incredulous statement –

"_WHAT?"_

Spirit yelped in shocked revulsion, ripping at the already loosely buttoned shirt, fingers prodding anxiously at the expanse of bare white flesh and – where was the spleen, anyway? His mouth gibbering a cacophony of shrieks and complaints and accusations – and, honestly, did gorillas even _have _spleens to donate? He traced the area around his belly button with frenetic concern (having come to the conclusion that the spleen was located somewhere in the lower abdomen), but there were no scars, no markings, no signs to the incision.

"How could you _do _this Stein? You're _sick, _you know that? You're a twisted freak! Where've you kept my spleen all this time? I – I demand you put it back!"

"You're looking in the wrong place."

"And if you even _think _about going near Maka – what?"

"The spleen is in the upper chest. On the left side."

Spirit blinked. Stein dragged on his cigarette.

"…oh," the redhead squeaked it, dizzied in denial, "I see."

Stein took a few steadied paces into the center of the room. With a dreary sweep of his coat, he sat down on an old, weathered, carven chair, its ebony form twisting and knotting in disturbed design. Its ends tapered into hulking wooden claws, dark and dusty; its back arching high over the doctor's head, mimicking demon wings in flight. Spirit wondered where he could have possibly gotten a chair like that.

But did he honestly want to know?

Stein reclined in the gothick throne, elbows rested on his knees, chin leaning on interlaced fingers. His glasses still held that same ghastly sheen, as if wondering – ever so idly – how to dismember the person before him without spilling too much blood.

"Why are you here, Spirit?"

The redhead swallowed back chills, opened his lips, when a horrible thought barraged him.

"M – _Maka! _She's still upstairs! Lost in your creepy INSANE ASLYUM –"

How could he have forgotten that? What the hell did his pitiful spleen matter when put up against Maka's precious organs? Here his sweet little daughter was, wondering alone and vulnerable in this fortress for the damned, amidst lunatics and scalpels and shadows, _amidst eyes in the dark – _oh, he could imagine her sniffling, quivering in her pigtails, needing her papa – _and where was he? Where was he? _

"_Don't worry, Maka! YOUR PAPA'S COMING!"_

Spirit practically leaped at the staircase, his hands thrown above him in a ridiculous gush of protectiveness. Stein did not stir at this moving display of fatherhood.

"She won't die. All the patients are locked up. And she has a keen sense of perception. I doubt she'll get lost."

The redhead visibly deflated, collapsing against the ancient floorboards with an air of defeat. He twitched an aggrieved expression toward the scientist,

"Oh yeah?" He sprang to his feet with a new bound of concern, "What about the child who came down the stairs, huh? What about him?"

"Crona?" Stein surveyed the man lackluster through his glasses, "He's a patient."

"_Hah! _You said all your patients were locked up –!"

"The dangerous ones are. You honestly think Crona's dangerous?"

Spirit attached the lower end of his jaw to the top in a moody scowl. No, no, the frail pink thing, shivering in its crumpled hospital gown, sort of boyish, sort of female, certainly did not appear dangerous. If anything, he seemed terrified that Maka would inflict harm upon _him_.

"…no, I guess not. Who is he anyway, Stein? Where did you get him?"

The MAD doctor flicked the debris of his cigarette into an empty fireplace, "He's a runaway from THE FREAK SHOW. He's clearly mentally damaged. I took him in."

"Why?"

Somehow, it did not seem likely for the harrowed man before him to take in spare children.

"_I already told you, dammit – he's NOT mine!"_

Spirit reeled back, stunned. Stein literally jumped from his seat, latching those devious hands into his former weapon's undone collar, slamming him with aching velocity into the fireplace. The redhead gasped as the air was thrown forcibly from his lungs, gaping wordless at the manic change to overcome the doctor: one minute, Stein sat languid and deadened, a certifiable corpse, sneering lazily at his words – now he was a roaring madman, the glasses askew, the eyes deranged, the mouth hiked back in a totally senseless snarl –

_ "Why the hell would you say something like that, huh? HUH? That pitiful wretch – related to me? I don't know how he could be related to HER! He's not mine – I told you – but he looks just like his mother, doesn't he? Yes…he looks…just like…" _

The morbid eyes rolled, the man in the lab coat shuddered.

Stein's fingers slackened on Spirit's collar, and he stumbled back, forlorn, forlorn, seemingly lost in his own disbelief. Silver hair splayed haphazard before the crooked glasses; broad shoulders heaved in the aftermath of mania. He stared dismally at the redhead, and his gaze was a meaningless pool, blind, poisoned, endless, the depths of a black madness that can swallow one whole.

"Stein…what…_what…?" _

The robed figure shook, hands groping at a patchwork face.

"Something's – _happened _to me, Spirit…this world, this place…it's utterly _godless_, you know? And something's…_happened_…to…me…"

Spirit pushed himself nervously off the wall, wincing at the bruises blooming like purplish-blue flora against his shoulder blades. Such mechanic, unbidden part of him wondered if the injuries would affect his performance at work, but he was currently too concerned with the bowed figure before him to take much notice.

_I nearly forgot…it was my job; all those years ago…to make sure the madness didn't take this person. _

"Come on, Stein…you're the strongest meister DWMA ever knew. You can fight this. Remember all we were taught –"

"– it used to make me _sick. _All those brainless students, _gaping _at the gods; nothing original about them, nothing at all…and now, _now, this world is completely godless…" _

"It's also _soulless."_

The MAD doctor paused, caught between worlds.

One was a wraith, the other a graveyard.

"…you're right, of course," Stein murmured, faint, faint, and it was as if he just emerged from someplace unfathomable, from the bottom of an unknown ocean, "Yes. Soulless."

His hand went grasping for his cigarettes.

_He's worse than ever. This was a bad move. _

But once upon a time, in a world almost like a dead faerytale, this man had been his meister.

And Spirit had the face of a little girl in pigtails locked up in his heart.

_For Maka. _"Stein...I – I _am_ here for a reason."

"Hm?" the MAD doctor turned, a corpse wrapped up in the gauzy gray folds of smoke, "Right. It's about the murders, isn't it?"

Spirit started, gawking at the abrupt and eerie acknowledgement to plans he had not yet confessed. It was something about Stein that always unsettled him; that ability to guess what someone was thinking before one even said it. And why had he spent all that time asking Spirit why he came if he knew the answer anyway? It was downright _creepy – _but then, he supposed there would always be something inherently creepy about Stein. He was gaunt, silent, and solemn, his mind rich and cultured – a genius's mind – but steeped in the blood of insidious things, things better left hidden in attics, buried five feet deep; lost leagues under the sea.

Something macabre.

"Yes. It is."

"I don't know why you'd come here about that," a wisp of smoke seemed to curl around his words, "Never figured it out back then. Don't know what it means now."

Spirit ground his teeth in evident frustration, "You must know _something, _Stein. Don't tell me you haven't thought about this. The murders that took place right before THE DEATH OF DEATH start repeating and you aren't curious enough to investigate them? We both know that's not like you."

There was a prolonged pause in which Spirit grieved Stein's addiction to nicotine. Honestly, it would take him hours to get that smoky smell out of his hair, and how would his customers feel about that?

Strike that. How would his _boss _feel about that? That thought was more alarming.

"Nope. Can't say I've thought about it."

_"Stein –!"_

The MAD doctor sighed, pulling his limp gaze toward the former weapon.

"They certainly are similar. Eyes taken out. Chests opened. Limbs missing. All by the old cathedrals, the school…alleys. Very similar."

_"Exactly!" _

"Could just be STAR."

Spirit's expression was hard. "Quit playing around, Stein. You and I both know that's not true. These murders are specifically mimicking the ones just before THE DEATH OF DEATH."

"Heralds of the RED ANGEL," Stein breathed, a dead man with deader eyes, his lab coat like a straightjacket.

The redhead felt something icy seize his heart, like the hand of an apparition.

"But there's no way it can be the return of the RED ANGEL. The world can't get worse than it already is. The SHINIGAMI are already dead. Morality is dead. The world is rotting. What could it possibly –?"

"You believe the RED ANGEL has a mind?"

"What?"

"The RED ANGEL. 'What could _it _possibly want,' you asked. Perhaps the RED ANGEL is a sentient force, always watching, always looking – a sort of anti-SHINIGAMI. Satan. The Devil. It stole morality: the heart of humanity. Perhaps it's just reminding us that it's still watching."

"I don't have time for philosophy, Stein."

"I'm not philosophizing," even so, the MAD doctor surveyed Spirit with a keener gaze, "But whoever orchestrated these murders wants us to think that. The RED ANGEL still watches. It waits. It's vengeful. It comes to kill BLOODSTONES this time. It's evidently a challenge?"

"But from _who?" _

Stein watched him, swallowing smoke.

_{something macabre}_

"That's the question."

"Stein," the redhead pounced on the name, blue eyes suddenly urgent, RED hair like bloody ropes, drizzling around a white face, "This is important," he took a step nearer the MADMAN, his mouth wired tight, his limbs taut, his face blazing, "I want you to promise me something," and there was steel in his voice, in his words, "If the RED ANGEL comes again – _I want you to promise me you'll keep Maka safe." _

The silence that followed was still and cold and haunted as the grave.

"…what?"

"You heard me. Take care of Maka," Spirit's voice was low, but his face was etched in shadows, imbued with a strange certainty, "I know we don't always see eye to eye," he tried not to wince at the drastic understatement, "And – I know you've got issues to work out," that was almost blasphemous, it was so weakly stated, "But I have no one else to turn to: all the other DEATH SCYTHES are dead, their meisters gone…We used to be partners, Stein," he swallowed convulsively, hating the tremor that threaded its way into his voice, a hiccup of emotion, "I – I want to know I can count on you. If the RED ANGEL really comes back, if it takes me, I want you to kill me and care for Maka."

Stein stood there, a dreary patchwork face, the cigarette dangling as something poisonous from his lips, emitting snakelike drifts of smoke. The doctor was a whirlwind of identities, a cacophony of memories, bittersweet and strange: the morbid little boy in the corner of the classroom; the isolated genius; the FREAK with the scalpel, unsmiling and unwanted; the righteous fighter; the loyal meister; the brilliant mind, stark and deep and intricate; the bizarre mind, lost and dark and macabre; a bloody enigma; a surviving friend.

Spirit looked at him and he saw a world that was dead.

"Promise me."

"…that's why you brought her here. For me to meet her."

"Just promise me, Stein."

A thunderous crash and a guttural scream and Spirit was alerted to the chaos rupturing in some unbidden room upstairs.

An unfamiliar voice: "DAMN YOU, GIRL!"

"Ah," Stein trailed on his words, the dismal green eyes flicking idly to the ceiling, "It seems the DEMON SWORD has met your little daughter."

"Wh – what? I thought you told me all the dangerous patients were locked up?"

An infuriating drag of the poison-stick, "Oh, yeah. Well, it's easy to forget Ragnarok. He lives in Crona's spine."

"WHAT?"

"I wonder how _he'll_ take to the little girl's cheek."

"_Ma – MAKA!" _

And without a thought, the redhead was running again.


	12. RETROSPECT Is Bitter?

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Soul Eater or "Annabel Lee." They are both owned by their respective owners, Okubo Atsushi and Edgar Allan Poe.

**A/N: **Ugh…guys, I'm really sorry that I keep doing this. I've come to the conclusion that I will not be able to write a thorough, long, interesting, exciting chapter **until** school ends. Or at least until I get an extended weekend for Easter break. Because, honestly, lately – I've been entirely disgusted with how I'm writing this story. I have **a lot of ideas** that I really want to get out on paper (well, Microsoft Word) and yet this story is **crawling slower than a snail** because I only have time/energy/effort to churn out **5-8 pages** when I'd rather have **at least 10 pages** out that actually **jumpstart the plot.**

This chapter was supposed to have a whole other scene from Soul's P.O.V. But due to time constraints and my desire to (however slimly) meet my deadline, I had to chop it off at Maka. I'm seriously depressed, because I feel like this is **yet another **chapter where **nothing really happens**. I mean, don't get me wrong, I think what happens in this chapter is vital to the plot…but, to adopt Soul's phrasing, I don't think it's nearly cool enough to be a chapter on its own.

But yet again – I really don't want to fall behind my deadline because that's been happening a lot lately. I guess what I'm trying to say is…/sigh/…I have a lot of really developed ideas about this story, but I'm **really **frustrated/disappointed with myself on how I'm dealing it out because I feel it's moving **WAY** too slowly.

So basically, I **want to thank you guys because you're all awesome and willing to put up with a story that's plot inches slower than a tortoise**. You have **no idea** how much I appreciate you. I promise you guys that once I'm on break my chapters will 1) Get longer – and – 2) Push the plot forward.

And on a closer note: **Next chapter will return to the Black*Star/Tsubaki-D.T.K.-Liz/Patty predicament – so there should ACTUALLY be SOME action there! **

Now, as always, to thank my wonderful reviewers personally:

* * *

**Kitori-xxx: **Wah! Thanks so much! Last chapter was very rushed and I'm still sort of cringing at it, but your words make me smile and keep me going. And ahaha, I'm so thrilled you enjoyed Stein and Spirit's lack of master plans! As you can probably tell by now, I'm the type of writer that has characters stew on near impossible problems that take seemingly forever to solve, so there will definitely be no immediate solution to the godless world issue anytime soon. As always, I really, really appreciate you reading. Still gotta respond to your stuff :3

**DeadlySereneGrace: **Aww THANKS! Well, I've updated now, however crappy I feel this chapter is. /sweatdrop/ As for the Red Angel – if you go to Chapter 8 – the one called "Bloody Stars Hate Faerytales?" Mifune tells Black*Star what the Red Angel is in a pretty straightforward manner. I mean, it's supposed to be a bit of a mystery, so Mifune doesn't give everything away – but it's this bright red light that showed up when Lord Death fell and sapped people of their morality. Wah. Now that I told you, you probably don't even have to check up on that chapter, ahaha. xP

**GrossGirl18: **Omg, I love Stein too; especially his craziness. As for your other comment – /sweats/ – I shouldn't say this because its - /sweats some more/ - sortakindainaway an **itty bit** of a spoiler, but…well…/intake of air/ while Spirit is personally convinced that all the other Death Scythes are dead…things are not always as they appear…/wink, wink, nudge, nudge/ And as for an OC, I swear to you I'm developing one! I've just had a lot of essays and reading and homework…and then I'm trying to keep up here…so I'm really frazzled, but I swear in a **week or so** I should have someone!

**2random4words: **GYAH! I'm so happy you liked it so much! I was pretty disappointed with it, so that means a lot! And I'm overjoyed that you thought Stein was in character!

**SkaleFlapper15: **Aw, you're always so amazing to me~ thanks so much for saying they're in character; I've been trying really hard to keep everyone intact. And ahaha, I think it makes sense! You mean the randomness that goes on in that chapter? I think it was me attempting to mimic Atsushi's brilliant development of Stein-Spirit interactions. xD

**Penny: **I STILL HAVE TO PM YOU. And I **swear** I will! I just…have no…life…right…now. =_=; /keels over/ And – omg – you're – you're bringing up actual **lines **you liked? /falls over/ You are TOO good to me! Honestly, you are. Ahaha – I never really looked at it that way – but you a**re** right. Spirit definitely has a short attention span; ah…what a sadly small-minded man he is… As for your other words: You honestly have no idea how much that means to me. I don't even think I deserve the honor of the beautiful compliments they've given to me. I'm overwhelmed with how phenomenal you are. Expect a PM sometime this week. I can't wait to talk to you!

**Hempel's Raven: **GAH, I really should PM you too – you deserve it when you give me such thorough reviews! Tee~hee, I'm glad you liked the lighter mood of last chapter. As a freakish individual, I typically get frustrated with myself when the story lacks the gothic elements the story is supposed to hold, but I felt like I had no choice last chapter – it just wouldn't be in character if they didn't do **something **ridiculous. As for your comment on the length/descriptions of last chapter…you are **SO RIGHT **and it **BREAKS MY HEART. **I was definitely disappointed with last chapter, but as you predicted, I was **really distracted** with Jekyll/Hyde essay I needed to write. So it came out…ah…suckish. Although this chapter is **still way too short** due to school constraints, however, I tried **really hard **to keep descriptions from being too lame/plain/nonexistent – so I desperately hope that at the very least, it's not a total disappointment in that context.

**Aras the crazy writer: **Wow, I'm so honored you actually liked it! I thought last chapter was too sparse, but I had no choice but to put it up. :/ Otherwise – ahaha, you got you wish! There's a bit more Ragnarok in this chapter! Thanks so much for reading!

**Abiding Angel: **Ahaha x3 I actually love Spirit-Stein interactions too, so I'm glad you enjoyed last chapter! Ah…if I'm disappointed about that chapter being too sparse, there's one thing I am happy about it – it got people to notice the Red Angel! As "they" or "it' is a central part of the story, I promise you that mystery will be explored more as the story goes along! Otherwise, thanks so much for being so understanding about late updates; it drives me crazy when that happens to me… I hope you enjoy this chapter, even though I…ah…sort of hate it. /sweatdrop/

**Gen . Malaise: **I'm so honored you care enough about the story to ask that. xD Why Bloodstones retained their morality despite the Red Angel is supposed to be a bit of a mystery…it will be solved by the end of the story, but at this moment, it's supposed to just make the reader inquisitive. However, if you go back to Chapter 8: "Bloody Stars Hate Faerytales?" there's a whole part where Mifune talks to Black*Star about the Red Angel and he has his own theories about why Bloodstones kept their morals (in B*S terms: Mifune believes Bloodstones were simply "strong" enough to resist the effects of the Red Angel). Not saying you have to agree with him, but so far, it's the only hint the story allows. But I swear by the end of the story that will be answered. Otherwise: np about your last review, I just wanted to keep things as neural as possible. I'm still eternally grateful that you were so easygoing and friendly about the whole thing when I know there are others who jump down people's throats about that sort of thing. And ahaha, yes, I know lots think Crona is female – I have a friend who does. And it's totally great: variety is the spice of life, isn't it? xD As always, thanks so much for reading!

**Miki Okinawa: **Haha, yes! Spirit's obsession over Maka is one of the few traits I actually like in his character. And woot! I'm so glad you noticed the Red Angel! I swear more will be spoken about them! It's a main plot device in the story.

**ScytheMeister: **Thanks for being understanding about the late post. And I'm so honored you find still find this story interesting. I get frustrated that it's…well…not – so your words really help keep me going!

**Souliel: **As usual, I adore you. xP I'm thrilled you enjoyed the characterization – I try really hard to keep people IC. And yes, I totally understand where you are coming from with Spirit: in many ways, he's – ah – basically an ass, but the one admirable thing I try to pull out of him is his devotion to his daughter. And OMG, I'm sooo thrilled and excited you noticed the Medusa-reference! Although she has not made an appearance yet in this story, at some point, in the (distant) future, she will be a major player in this weird tale – and she definitely plays prominent roles in both Crona and Stein's development. I'm also honored you're interested about the Red Angel: you have very interesting and believable guesses – but I don't want to say anything and give something away! X3

**Thephoenixblade: **First, I'm honored you really liked last chapter, because in a lot of ways, I was seriously disappointed with it. Yes, I decided to forgo a chapter of muddled insanity (i.e.: Stein's POV) so I could push some of the plot forward – basically, have the characters talk about the Red Angel. And about the Crona chapter – either way, it's all good. It's always helpful to get constructive criticism. I just like to interact and respond to it : ) As for last chapter…I totally understand what you mean about Stein. I actually agree with you. I do think his maniacal outbursts are meant to be – er- happier. But I purposely made him respond angrily last chapter for a specific reason – it wasn't supposed to showcase one of his typical crazy escapades – it's a hint towards a particular plotline that includes him, Crona and Medusa. For some reason, in the universe of this story, Stein has a big sore spot about Crona – he typically gets angry when people mention him too much/try to interact with him. There are reasons behind his that will be explored and revealed eventually…anyway, just trying to explain my reasons for doing what I did! There will definitely be a lot of happy!insane!Stein later on in this story. Otherwise, as always, thanks so much for reading and taking the time to critique things as well!

**Mars Death: **You are always so sweet and I really need to continue reviewing your story! I'm so honored you thought last chapter was good; I was disappointed with it for a lot of reasons. And /blush/ I'm really overcome with your words. I'm truly blessed to have a reader like you! I love thanking people like you, honestly x3 As for the Stein/Spirit…ahaha…do you know I noticed that to while I was writing it? I did not plan it, but I also sort of – er- sensed it while I was writing last chapter, so you are definitely not going crazy. I guess I have a bit of a weakness for it ^^; – though, in the context of this story, I'd probably only vaguely imply it instead of being outright. xD As always, thanks so much for reading!

* * *

"_But we loved with a love that was more than love – _

_I and my __Annabel Lee_

_With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven_

_Coveted her to me."_

Edgar Allan Poe, "Annabel Lee"

**Chapter Eleven: RETROSPECT is Bitter? **

In the weeks to come, she would remember him like a light on a dark horizon.

Meeting the boy: thin, sick, and spindly, the sort of person that faded unnoticed into cobbles, the very wraith of the destitute; a malnourished thing, camouflaged in blood and bruises. The vacant eye of a soulless world skimmed over him instinctively, mired as he was in the RED of past horrors; the cold gaze of strangers breezed over him in chilly mists, as if he was already a corpse, abandoned to rigor mortis and the ditch – Maka would always recall him as the blazing luminescence in the black heart of a nightmare.

Certainly, he was brittle, the boy, _Crona. _

Yes. He was brittle, most definitely, but he was beautiful also – beautiful as the rare bloom she gave to him. In fact, he was sweeter than those irises, plum-royal emblems of life, growing wordless on her bleak windowsill, upon some high-up, dismal attic. Sweeter, because like those irises, he breathed, truly breathed, and _lived, _but unlike them, he did not wilt at her touch, did not wither against her palm. Maka's flowers were pretty, but they were empty-headed things, fickle and frail, and whether due to her clumsy gardening skills, or to the roaring REDNESS of the bloody sky above, or to the decrepitude of the nearly poisonous dirt in their pots – they died almost a quick as they unfurled their glorious purple petals.

Crona was not so fickle a flower.

True, he appeared weak, but she spied a hidden radiance, buried deep within his shriveled core. And despite the shivers, despite the tremors, despite the fears, Crona lived – and he _endured. _A fragile creature, he still breathed in the slaughter-rich air; a trembling victim, he still persisted in this embittered graveyard that was his garden; he still blinked open timid eyes each morning, even if his only sight were rusted turrets, soot-stained buildings, a convoluted maze of dead bodies: he still opened his eyes to a city of sins. While those flowers on her windowsills lay sidelong and lifeless, he _survived. _

He was a bud of surviving innocence.

A mere bud, but he would someday bloom.

And he was the most beautiful person Maka ever met.

_It's the first time…the first time…I've ever been able to actually save someone. _

Maka spent her entire life swimming against currents of blood. She bore the weight of a filthy world on her shoulders, a cracked world, a merciless world, a forbidding world; its heaviness sunk like a torpor into her bones, as ugly and gray as cement, but still she carried it. She was chasing a dream that dangled, like ethereal spirits, on the very outskirts of her eyesight. Elusive as a sprinting doe, the untouchable dream twisted and spun and danced in her peripheral vision, calling her, beckoning her with rose-tinted fingers: and she followed it, this dream for salvation, but always, when she out a hand to grasp it – when she tried to lasso the ghost of deliverance into reality – it crumpled to dust and dried blood.

It happened when she followed the music: seeming golden threads of sound, they led her only to a derelict bar and a haunted pianist who grinned heartlessly his dagger-teeth. It happened again in that selfsame bar, a hell of smoke and alcohol: the man pinioned to the table, reduced to a bawling, snot-dribbling child; when she tried to save him, the very hand that drew her to this place – a deceptive hand, bony white, weaving music; stealing life – reeled her from her, and she watched her attempted rescue degenerate into a grotesque splatter of RED.

But not this time. _No, no,_ it would be different with this boy.

This person she knew she must save, because if she didn't, she could no longer live.

As Crona cradled her silly little gift, that wrinkled flower, to his chest, sobbing all the while – Maka realized she now cradled a much more precious gift to her heart. He was the bruised face of innocence, and his wounds and sorrows stung at her soul with more intensity than any other horror she ever witnessed. No one had ever stirred that fierce need to protect in her more potently than Crona.

And so, quite simply, Maka could not fail him.

Because if she did, she would despise herself even more than this misbegotten world she lived in.

_They won't understand that, though. They think I'm crazy. _

Which was laughable, as one was a maniac, laughing at his shadow and carving up raccoons, while the other was obviously just as disturbed, as he purposely sought the initial MADMAN out.

So – _who_ was the crazy one here?

But it did not matter: they called themselves adults and deemed her a child and thus expected her to conform to their logic.

* * *

Papa did not take too kindly to her pursuing Crona up the stairs. He came barging into the room some twenty minutes later, huffing obnoxiously, RED locks flying askew on a stricken face, the pitiful mouth spilling syrupy falsehoods about how much he "loved" her and how it was his "duty" to "protect" her as her "father." The scientist trailed behind him, in a slower, more menacing step, like a ghoul in glasses; he swallowed smoke and spoke nothing.

Maka would have accosted Papa on several of his lies had she not already been in a rather heated altercation with the thing in Crona's spine.

As it was, the DEMON SWORD did not enjoy being struck with scientific apparatus. The powerful white hands had clutched at one of her pigtails, rearing her glaring face up to his blank one – (the thing had no visible mouth; a smooth ebony head, with peculiar white lines crisscrossing diagonally across its front; and large, bulbous, stark eyes, imprinted with a hellish black X for a pupil) – nearly lifting her entire body off the floor with one upraised arm.

It was _strong. _

Slamming her into the wall, the monster called Ragnarok jeered its insults and furies, all through that demonic, lipless face, while Maka's shocked lungs struggled to take in air. Her body felt limp in its grip, but her mind was sharp and blazing, and her own words had slashed bitterly through his threats. Crona was screaming, seemingly unperturbed by a creature living, obviously unbidden, in his body, but quite perturbed in its pursuit to hurt Maka.

"Wha – what are _you _doing inside Crona?" she spat at the thing, eyes hard and fearless, even as her heart seized up in the exertion of attempting to free herself from its grip.

"_Goou-BE!" _the DEMON SWORD shrieked in what was clearly some nonsensical, made-up language, "I don't see why _food _needs to know! Screw you, girl, you look too stringy and you probably taste like acid, but I'll deal with a little indigestion to get you back –!"

Crona, meanwhile, writhed and stumbled beneath the weight of his parasitic twin, gray hands clenched at uneven hair, cheeks drawn and nearly blue in his mounting distress: _"No, no, STOP IT! Leave her alone, Ragnarok! I can't deal with you eating someone who says she'll be my friend!" _

"Idiot! You think she'll be your _friend? _No one would want to be friends with someone as ugly as _you!"_

The words had bolstered Maka's resolve, a white-hot inferno in her core. Spine cringing against the hard stone wall, she slipped surreptitious fingers beneath her skirt. Her fingers curled sweaty around the tiny pocketknife sheathed on a band wrapped around her upper thigh. She always kept the little blade on her; you needed one here, in this world, where the only smile that greeted you was the unbidden edge of a murderer's knife.

The thing was evidently powerful, but she was willing to bet it would release her if she slashed it across the face –

But it was at precisely that moment that a collision of events took place:

Maka crooked her right leg, so that the bottom of her foot pressed against the wall, preparing herself to spring away from its surface; the plastic handle of the knife bit hard into her palm. Choking through the crushing grip at her throat, she launched herself as far forward as she could, the blade aimed at the faceless face before her – and it was then that Spirit came pummeling through the door, dribbling his supposed worries, limbs flailing in his desperate attempt to reach her. The patchwork scientist followed; his eyes the drab evergreen of a forlorn forest, but the scene seemed to awaken something in his mummified soul.

There was a gray flash as Maka drove her pocketknife down; a gray blur as scythe blades jutted out from her Papa's back; and finally, a gray smear that was Stein, silvery head bent low, as he cut past his former WEAPON with his hands outstretched.

"Soul – Menace."

Stein's hands thudded, almost anticlimactically, against Crona's side.

_"BIEE – GYAAAAAA!" _

The black thing screeched incoherently, a writhing column of weirdly gelatinous-looking muscle, twisting this way and that, while Crona wailed and moaned beneath him, a sick thing, staggering on unsteady feet. Maka could not take her eyes away from it, a grotesque sight: the stick-thin boy clad in nothing but a loose-fitting hospital gown, its wide collar slipping easily off a bony shoulder, screaming in certain agony; and the colossal monster sprouting like some deformed weed from a spine nearly visible through pale-pale flesh and thin clothes.

But it was the pain she saw that made it grotesque, not the unnaturalness of the DEMON SWORD.

_"Cro – na," _Maka coughed, throat sore and bruised from Raganrok's assault. Her pocketknife had fallen in the commotion: she grabbed limply at her, struggling herself upward.

But her struggles proved useless. The tossing monster that was Ragnarok loosed a final shriek, reaching a pitch that pierced at her eardrums like deadly needles, and exploded into disjointed droplets of black _stuff,_ falling down over the room like a poisoned rain, painting Maka in ebony splashes.

Crona moaned, his eyes rolled: he collapsed without a sound.

"Wh – what did you _do _to him?" she gasped, pushing herself away from the wall, accidentally tasting the black liquid that had splattered her lips, "Is he – ?"

"He's not dead," Stein answered blandly, while Spirit exhibited his usual hysterics, scurrying around his irritated daughter in a manner he deemed 'fatherly.'

Maka shoved off Papa's hands, her gaze clashing with his, "Well, what did you do then?"

"Hit him with my soul wavelength," his haunted eyes lingered over hers, "And saved your life, most likely. You're lucky Ragnarok is starving or else he never would have gone down so fast. Crona's unconscious. He'll be up again in a few hours."

Maka slipped her blade back into its hidden sheath, her lips tight, her gaze wary as it flitted, like a green ghost, between the MADMAN and his prone patient.

"I had it under control," she retorted shortly, then forced her locked jaw to loosen, "But – thank you," earnestly stated; she knelt once more, staring intently at the pale form before her, all sunken lids and parted mouths, "How did that _thing _get inside him?"

But there was no answer to this. Maka turned her eyes from the still boy, gray and chilly as a corpse, haggard, starved, lifeless, the oddly pink-purple hair splayed out behind him in messy tufts. She glanced up at his caretaker, also cadaverous, but menacing as well, tall and somber and forbidding, with dreary eyes that stared out dismally through soulless glass panes, dull eyes veiled in certain horrors, certain whispers of blood and secrets; wrapped up in a lab-coat like the shawl of a dead man; and the mind that stared through those eyes was something macabre.

_Who are you? Should I really trust you? Why did Papa take me here?_

…_how _did _the DEMON SWORD get inside Crona? _

_But no, no…as bad as Papa is…he wouldn't bring me to a man who experiments on children… _

…_would he? _

And she saw it again, for an ephemeral blink of time: an unholy dome, crackling as lightening does all about his body, immense and awful, _perverse, perverse, _imbued with cultured power.

"Hm. Will you look at that," the drawled words were not a question, "Without any training, the little girl can see my soul."

Spirit started up from his position (quivering near Maka, his hands hovering by her shoulders), forcing himself upright and throwing a panicked blue look at the MADMAN, "What?"

But Stein's attention was on Maka.

"You can see souls."

A chill crept through Maka's torso, like the cool hand of a phantom, wrapping insubstantial fingers of mist around her heart. And still, she could make it out, the unholy dome, its cracklings of unbidden energy, its raw perversity, its rich and developed and macabre power; its stunning potency; its awe-inspiring immensity. It was _one_ with him, the dome, inextricably linked up with the MADMAN's flesh. It fueled his every motive, told his every action, whispered the untold truths of his identity; it complimented and completed his bizarre mind; it was the deepest bit of him, the part that subsists after death, the eternal part, the key and the core and the purpose of every human being.

"Your…soul…"

Maka's fingers curled protectively around Crona's wrist.

"You – you know all about Soul Studies," she murmured dizzily, "I – I can see souls?"

Stein tapped his glasses up his nose, seemingly unimpressed, "So it seems."

"Can all MEISTERS do this?" the blonde girl prompted, her eyes digging, as if hoping to unearth the as-yet-unspoken response from the MADMAN's stained soul, "How come it just started now?"

"Many reasons," Stein's hand poked mindlessly into a crumpled pocket, searching for more cigarettes, "This world has deadened itself toward the soul. Its presence and power has been nearly forgotten. So it's not surprising that your abilities wouldn't awaken until you came in contact with a particularly large one," he found his desired treasure, pressed it between his cold-looking lips, and began his search for a lighter, "Anyway, the answer is no, not every MEISTER can see souls. I can, though."

Something was thrilling inside Maka's whole body. She might have swallowed lightening.

She felt her heart race within her, breath catch wildly in her throat. She wiped absently at the blackish sludge that decorated her face, her free hand still squeezing protectively at Crona's faintly pulsing wrist. And within her chest a light was burning, like a little light in the dark, a single flame dancing in cold shadows, but its radiance was mounting, higher, higher, and its colors burning, brighter, brighter, until its beams shot forth through her every pore in golden hope, lit up her smile in dazzling revelation; blazed through the tumultuous green sea of her eyes.

_This – this soul I sense…it feels dangerous; perverse…but there's something else in it too. Something genuine…could it be something good? Can I trust this person? _

Crona lay inert at her side, still and bloodless, a victim of a godless world.

_It might be my only choice. I'll be careful. And I can keep an eye on Crona. _

"I – _we_ can see souls," Maka jerked her luminous gaze up at him, imploring, "Doctor Stein – _please – _teach me to be a MEISTER like you! I want my soul to get stronger. I want to see other souls all the time. And I'm sure there are others like me. If you start training people, we can fix this world; maybe we can _save it –"_

"No. Absolutely not."

Maka turned. Spirit's face was dark.

"Just because _you've _given up doesn't mean _I _will!" her words slashed through the air.

But Spirit might as well have been a wraith, only half-there, dim and haunting. The RED hair hung about him like a backwards halo, bloody-colored, clashingly vibrant against the sudden pallor of his skin. All frivolous smiles were stripped from him; all ridiculous antics blown to tatters: it was the forlorn skeleton of a man that stood in his place, weathered with horrors, brittle with exhaustion; the eyes that stared at her might as well have been the hollow sockets of a skull, they were so _dead – dead – dead._

"I said _no, _Maka. Whether you like it or not, I'm _still _your father and I won't have you risk for some crusade that will never work. Lord Death is dead. His son is dead. This _world _is dead and nothing is going to change that. Without the SHINGAMIS, there is no point in the MEISTER _or _the WEAPON. I won't let you throw away your life for a dream that can never come true. Absolutely not."

Something dark and hot smoldered in Maka's chest, something with the teeth of a viper.

The fury pushed up her throat – something monstrous – slick and bitter as vomit, as lasting and detrimental as poison. Her mouth filled with the taste of wormwood. The silence shrieked on her eardrums, dangerous as a tornado, hissing as a demon, ripping between them like blade forged from hellfire.

"That's where you're wrong," her voice was quiet, quiet, "You stopped being my father when Mama left last month."

Papa watched her, his face full of heaviness.

"Maka…"

But her gaze fell down to Crona's prostrate figure, limp and cold in his forced slumber. His skin was a mottled blue and gray beneath the crinkled white of his hospital gown, and the body itself was emaciated, weak, shivering in some internal chill. He was so small, so delicate, so tortured, and yet so precious, throttled in the bloody noose of a world that did not want him; a world that would seem him hang.

And Papa would let her see this person murdered?

_No. _I _refuse it. _

"Doctor Stein," Maka turned her back on the man who called himself 'father,' fixed an eye as sharp and pointed as a green needle on the MADMAN's unreadable face, "Earlier, you said I couldn't be a MEISTER until I had a WEAPON, right? Well, I swear to you, I _will _find a WEAPON. Consider it my first homework assignment."

But it was then that the damning call came:

"I doubt it's possible to find a WEAPON compatible with you, but you can try. It would be an interesting experiment," bored lips blew out ghosts of smoke, "But I must ask you never to visit Crona again. He's mentally disturbed and needs total isolation," and the eyes that surveyed her were something macabre, "If you see him again – I'll dissect you."

Which meant, pretty soon, she was going to be bolted to a dissection board.

It was as simple as that.

* * *

Four weeks had passed since this encounter.

Maka had not (yet) found a WEAPON, but she continued to see Crona.

The deception was simple: the INSANE ASLYUM was a huge, sprawling, crumbling mass of stone, rife with unexplored nooks and crannies, filled with hidden passageways and shadowy corners. In the dead of night, Maka merely crawled up an ivied old oak, ancient as time, and crept along its branches in the dark and silence until she reached a window, which, once opened, led her down a dusty corridor directly into Crona's chambers.

{_to Crona's prison}_

He gave her things, the MAD boy, the ASLYUM patient. As if in some desperate attempt to repay her for that single iris, he showered her in whatever little bit of shrubbery he could lay his bony hands on: curling blades of grass, the fluff of dandelions, scaly weeds, browny leafs of ivy were all he could offer, but she cradled them to her heart as though they were precious rubies.

Because Crona was the only thing innocent in this whole world.

And steadily, steadily, he became her only reason to stay alive.


	13. WHICH Way Does the MerryGoRound Turn?

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Soul Eater or _Carmilla. _Atushi Okubo and LeFanu take the cake for both.

**A/N: **Alrighty~so, when I posted this last Sunday I had no time to leave a proper ("proper") A/N and I did not get to thank my reviewers individually, **so I've now reposted this chapter with that added information** - as I said I would!

Ah...about this chapter: honestly, I meant it when I said "there are a lot of things I want to say about this chapter," but of course now my mind is drawing a blank. =_=; I guess I want to say that I actually enjoyed writing this chapter. Due to time and school constraints, I felt the last two chapters were lacking, but this one I actually found decent. I mean, I'm never 100% satisfied with my writing, but I really enjoy playing around with Liz's characterization, thus I enjoyed this chapter. And while I was rushing to post it before midnight, the actual chapter itself wasn't rushed - because I didn't need to cut out an ENTIRE SCENE as I was forced to do with the Maka chapter the week before. I feel like there was a decent amount of character development and plot. More character development, but that's okay because my writing tends more toward that.

Anyway, more importantly, I hope you enjoyed/enjoy it!

**I'm keeping this generic statement up because its true:** I also want to **THANK ALL OF YOU** for being **SO WONDERFUL AND SUPPORTIVE**, especially when I was so down last week. I don't know what I would do without you. Honestly, despite their being a computer screen between us, this story had made me feel **close to so many wonderful people**. THANK YOU AGAIN!

**Individual Thanks: **

**~NOTE! These individual thanks are for LAST chapter, not THIS one~ **

**Rockergurl95: **Ah, I know! Believe me, you have no idea how much I wanted Soul to show up last chapter. School, unfortunately, got in the way and I had to suffice with a shorter chapter. :/ But it might be a blessing in disguise because I have **a lot **to say about him and I'm planning on giving him a longer/more descriptive chunk of a chapter than originally planned. Anyway, I promise you that he will play a **huge **role! That's why I'm leading up to him instead of throwing him into the mix instantly. But I swear - he's gonna show up soon! Otherwise - **/BLUSH-BLUSH/ **You, madam (assuming you're a "madam" due to your name) are **WAY too good** to me! Omg, thanks SO much for the LOVELY words! You really speak way to highly of this story. **Thank you, thank you, thank you for enjoying it so much!** I'm honored!

**Kitori-xxx:** WAH! Omg, thanks SO MUCH for the enthusiasm! I really, really needed it...your reviews always mean a lot to me. And believe me, your reviews never turn to mindless drabble. ;D Once more -** /BLUSH/** - you are really **phenomenal** and I honestly don't deserve such high praise! Thanks for all the gorgeous support; I'm so lucky to have readers/reviewers like you!

**Penny: **Have I told you that I love you? **Omg, thank you, thank you, THANK YOU** for spending the time to give such a detailed review for a chapter I thought no one would read! It really, really means a lot to me that you say it wasn't lacking - and that you spend the time to look so deeply into things. **You have no idea how much that means to me or how much your reading means to me.** Your reviews get me through the week and always leave me wanting to write more! As for the mother: I definitely have plans concerning her, but I'm always torn about whether she should show up in the flesh, since her absence seems to be a theme in the manga/anime. But anyway, you do not have to thank me for sharing - **THANK YOU for reading.** I adore you. ;)

**Aras the crazy writer: **You are simply wonderful! Thank you so much for all the encouraging words! They really mean so much to me and have helped me write this current chapter...yes, school definitely sucks - and you aren't crazy! Haha, even Ragnarok needs love, I suppose ;D I'm glad you enjoyed his appearance. More will certainly come.

**2random4words: **I love you so much. The descriptions are always the part I'm most interested in/work hardest on, so hearing you say that really means a lot to me. Thank you!

**DeadlySereneGrace:** Thank you for being so understanding and supportive. It means a lot - and I'm sure you will solve whatever issues you have with updating! And Kiddo-kun will definitely be spoken about more: don't worry about it! He's a central figure in this story. xD

**Miki Okinawa: **It's **YOU** that's amazing! Thank you so much for giving me such a detailed review about the story in general and how its developing. It really helps me feel better and I actually agree with you on a lot of the points. I am purposely holding off on things because I don't want it to go too fast - I feel that when writers rush a plot, they forgo character development and I've always felt that character development is the most important part of any story. Your words have reminded me of that...and they also just warm my heart. **It really means a lot - I'm so lucky to have readers like you. And please, never apologize for a long review!** I adore them! Just as I adore you! xD

**GrossGirl18: **1) **YES, I DID!** And it didn't happen because I SUCK and all the essays I had to write for school got in the way. :( Which is way I found the last two chapters lame as well. **But you are absolutely right and I need to own up to that.** I'm going to save a date for a double chapter-update and I'm hoping its pretty soon. T.T It might be this weekend, but I'm afraid I won't have time and it'll turn out suckish. 2) xD! 3) I'm trying! 4) Wah, thanks so much. I also think Maka is awesome and Crona quite adorable. ;D 5) THANKS!

**ScytheMeister: **A wonderful review! Thank you so much!

**BowTiesAreCool: OMG. **Thanks for leaving such detailed review! I'm so honored that you read! And I'm especially honored given that you are willing to read it even though you have a different perspective on Crona's gender :) I have **no problem** with you calling he/she a girl in reviews, also...e**veryone's allowed to have their rightful opinion. xD** Gah! Yes, the pink-haired character is one of my favorites too - and I'm just thrilled you say I keep him/her in character! I always try. Ah~tee~hee! Yes! **Soul will definitely make an appearance!** I've actually spent just about this entire week thinking about his position in this story...**I have a lot of plans for him - I honestly do.** So, while the next chapter is picking up where this one leaves off, the one after that focus heavily on Soul. Beyond that, I LOVE you for calling this story gothic because that's EXACTLY the theme I'm going for. T.T! And not to mention, I'm extremely honored that you say I keep people in character...I know this world is vastly different from the canon universe. Otherwise, I'm actually a little shocked about what you said on the descriptions - since I typically focus a lot more on description than anything else and have readers tell me I use too many adjectives, that I'm too wordy, or don't focus enough on dialogue. But hey, I love writing descriptions, so I have no problem writing more. xD! **And omg! Thank you so, so much for your words and the plot and adding this to your favorites and watch list! You SO don't have to do that! **

**SkaleFlapper: **Thanks so much for the encouragement! As to the Crona/Maka thing, I really shouldn't say - but yeah, there's definitely some of that there. I might as well admit that there's gonna be Soma in it too. Which translates into love triangle. Gah! I'm evil because I love that stuff. ^^;; **Thank you so much for reading as always - I always know I can count on you! Thank you so, so much.**

**Thepheonixblade: **Omg! **Thank you SO MUCH for such a supportive review!** That really means a lot to me, especially when I was seriously distraught for a lot of reasons last week when I posted that chapter - just a lot of stress. So thank you. As for your words about Black*Star,** yes, I've definitely thought about that and our deer friend will show itself**. I need Tsubaki to get the Enchanted Sword first, though. xD But it'll be a pivitol part of Black*Star's development - and he does totally need to get knocked down a few pegs.

**Souliel: **I'm so glad you enjoyed the quote at the beginning! It always amuses me to find quotes for the beginning of each chapter - and it especially makes me happy when people recognize where they are from and also enjoy them!** As always, thank you so much for your beautiful, beautiful review.** You never cease to amaze me or fill me with gratitude. Your words always touch me - **you spend so much time and put so much effort into your comments and that really means the world to me**. Thank you for being so detailed about the Maka/Crona interaction...I adore their relationship and a lot of last chapter was trying to get at the origins/buildup of that. I need them to be close before I can really proceed further in their sect of the plotline. Beyond that - Maka and Soul will have major interaction pretty soon, so he'll become more than a character who just randomly pops up. As for Dr. Stein...ah. x3 He's such a head case. I wonder about him teaching too, honestly~ and you are absolutely right to question him running anything that has to do with stability. **Otherwise, as always, thanks for such a detailed review and your gorgeous encouragement and notes about character development. It really means everything to me. I simply love you! **

**Avatar Achrel: **Omg! Thank you SO much! I'm **so honored** that my story has satisfied what you are looking for! Otherwise - **OMG! I'm SO HONORED that you care about my original fiction! **Um...its a little hard to explain. It deals with vampires, but it veers away from a Twilight feel/setup. It has a lot to do with insanity and insane asylums...its mood is sort of similar to this story. **I would LOVE to let you read it** - but unfortunately at the moment, I feel that its not ready for human eyes. T.T **What I mean is...I'm still editing it and I want to make sure I'm entirely happy with it before I give it to someone else to read.** It took me about three years to write it, so I need to go back and check to make sure I don't have any accidental plotholes since I wrote it over such a long stretch of time...and there are a couple of things in the beginning of the story that need to be changed since I started it so long ago and now have a different view on certain characters. But I'm THRILLED that you cared enough to ask and there will definitely be a day when I want to share it!

* * *

"'_Girls are caterpillars while they live in the world, to be finally butterflies when the summer comes; but in the meantime they are grubs and larvae – don't you see?'"_

LeFanu, _Carmilla _

**Chapter Twelve: WHICH Way Does the Merry-Go-Round Turn? **

"Remember, doll-face, gimme the pearls, then kill Markheim, kay?"

Her mother stooped over her, as she sat in that thorny chair, and her mother smiled: all candied smiles and spilling cleavage in cheap satin bodices. The sunlight straggled weak and dirty through grungy panes, highlighting the ugly white walls of a barren apartment.

Elizabeth Thompson was nice years old, pretty as a princess.

Demure, demure, obedient – ribbons in her hair and Mommy cranking the silver key in her back, so that bedazzled gem eyes will blink effectively and a lovely child's head will totter its petite nods on a sweet slender neck. Skin rosy as the blooming flower, lashes thick and luxuriously pure, hung over eyes like sparkling seas; and the hair – _Sleeping Beauty cannot compare!_ – the most angelic silk-soft locks, all bound up in ribbon, spilling in brown-blonde prettiness over the darling small face.

_Filthy slut, _the child-princess thought, oh so _charming, _but puckered rosebud lips in diffident smiles.

"Yes, Mother."

The whore smacked Elizabeth's cheek appreciatively, her nails long and ragged and chipped with dead paint.

The nails reminded her daughter of their living conditions. A derelict apartment, sad and austere and unsettling, a dreary dead space, done up with naked white walls and mussed gray carpets. It consisted of two rooms, the communal bathroom located in the dingy corridor outside: the apartment itself was a cramped thing, bitingly bright, miserably suffocating. The colorless walls told nothing of the people who lived inside them – unclothed, unclean, uncouth walls – blank canvases only decorated in pale water-stains and spiderlike cracks: no pictures hung from the flat uncolored surface, no tapestries fell in velvet-rich disguise over the shoddy workmanship. Thin, rattling walls, stuffed here and there with untelling bits of paper-towel to ward off an outside chill. Peeling plaster and drifting snowflakes of paint.

There was not even any _furniture_. Just hunched brown boxes, threadbare and tatty, strewn about the ugly carpet, their insides (a collection of rotted blankets and unlabeled cans) spilled out among the floor like guts from a murdered person. They were detached, miscellaneous items, objective necessities, scattered from unfeeling, unconnected boxes; they could have belonged to a stranger – they were no different than the boxes you saw stacked in desolate, dripping alleys.

No. There was _nothing _in the apartment. Nothing but nothingness, white and sullen.

No family reflection, no personal touch, no closeness, no charismatic Thompson ghost infused within the dilapidated huddle of rooms and doors. Simply flaking paint and crumbling plaster and a naked light bulb stuttering its sickly luminescence, throwing ghastly relief onto the holes and fissures, hideous, hideous, a mocking display. There was only ever this, the long, brown, muddy hallway with its besmirched and moldering bathroom, the two gaping white rooms – home to termites and the beetle – no furniture but for sad homeless boxes, tins of watery tomatoes and gossamer sheets that crumple to dust.

Except for Mommy's room.

Oh, oh – perhaps that was not mentioned!

Mommy's room – down the corridor of sludge – sitting sweetly in a separate apartment, glittering like a palace.

Wait.

Now – _who's _the Wicked Queen again?

Elizabeth decided to play Snow White today.

"I'm so glad you understand, doll-face," her mother – the whore – the jealous Queen – preened her reeking smile and hitched back the glorious russet curls, her cheap body all wrapped up in spilling satin robes, the near-transparent fabric clinging to her hips and draping luxuriously from cream-colored shoulders, "Honestly. I'm just _so _grateful to have at least _one_ little windup doll smart enough to know what it's doing. You know, I think you're just like me, doll-face. You got looks and brains – you'll be _just like me_ one day, Elizabeth."

And she clutched the girl's delicious little chin, dabbing her cheek with an unbearable kiss; the effect was like being smothered in dirty rosewater.

Elizabeth felt her tongue curl in scathing resentment. Hearing the words was like swallowing mud: the sliminess gathered at the back of her throat, oozing slickly and bitterly into her mouth, coating her very teeth in a filth-flavored repulsion. She was suffocated by the woman's touch, offended by her mere presence; her suggestion wheedled into her mind the same way a worm eats its way through a dead person's brain.

_Haha, ha-ha! _Pretty little windup dolls, the whore called them!

So pretty! So fresh! So sweet!

_Wind them up and watch them dance! _

_I'll kill you, _this particular windup doll thought – _oh so precious! – _all ribbon and sweetness, but her eyes are uncanny. _I promise that I will. _

But Elizabeth knew she must play Snow White today. "May I leave now, Mother?"

The whore sighed, full of rich languor, "You and Patricia – my little windup dolls – oh, isn't it _funny? _How _adorable._ But your sister, I don't know, doll-face…I'm afraid she isn't much like us. She's just so _stupid. _It must be some sort of defect from her father (whoever _he _is) – because there's absolutely no brainsin that useless blonde head of hers! What a waste of a pregnancy; I could have done without being fat for nine months, you know. Really, I should have aborted her –"

So Elizabeth decided to abort her mother.

Now, strictly speaking, Snow White lies pretty and prone and passive in a glittering glass casket, a ruby-lipped dead thing for princes to sigh over; the Wicked Queen dances and dies on hot shoes.

But Elizabeth choked on necrophilia and RED iron slippers, so she settled instead for a butcher knife in the dark.

Stealthily, stealthily, the little windup doll crept into the Wicked Queen's royal chambers that night – _Patty's so much smarter than you, stupid, stupid bitch – _the plush velvet carpet in a room like a palace did not even whisper beneath her bare feet, soft, soft, she made delicately quiet princess footfalls – _You ugly whore! Patty made you fat? Patty made you fat? Patty is more beautiful than you will ever be! – _the room was all silence and all shadow and all sweetness, smelling of tiger lilies and other stolen flowers; the darkness winking with the half-lit shine of pilfered jewels – _You stupid, you ugly – you – I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! It's your fault! It's YOUR fault that Patty smiles even when she isn't happy! YOU did that! – _the Wicked Queen was sprawled out lovely and prostrate on a still sea of sheets, chestnut locks thrown asunder on milky-white pillows – _How dare you? How DARE you hurt Patty! Your own daughter – no, MY sister! MY SISTER! – _the whore's lips were parted like an open blossom, and her glasslike eyes flitted heavenly beneath the gauzy film of her lids; she lay pretty and prone and passive in her satiny grave – and _who _was Snow White again? _Who_ was the Wicked Queen? – _I'm NOTHING like you! I want to see Patty smile again! I want to see Patty smile FOR REAL! I hate you! I HATE YOU! I'LL KILL YOU! – _butcher knives were smiles in dark; they swung with all the grace of the guillotine; and _ah, ah, _the rose petals spilt out among the pillows! RED rose petals on white, white pillows! Blood on her mother's shredded neck! _Who is Snow White?_ _Who is the Wicked Queen?_ Murder, murder!

And there stood the whore's little windup doll, the key in her black twisting slowly in the opposite direction.

The knife cradled tenderly in sweet, angelic hands, the blood dripping in soundless _patter, patter _on the rug.

Elizabeth smiled through tears.

/ _now everything STOPS/ _

_/ the chamber reduces to screaming black wraiths and shrilling phantoms: 'MURDERER, MURDERER!' they shriek, and Liz fears them because she cannot kill them; 'I did it for Patty! I did it for Patty!' she wails into their yowling cacophony, and her voice mingles and dies among them, insignificant – unheard. The ghosts swoop over her like the claws of an owl, and unbidden, they clutch at her heart and force it to burst; they'll swallow her whole, sink rotted-thorn teeth into pink flesh, babbling through the rosy froth of her blood, painting their wrinkled black lips RED: – 'MURDERER! MURDERER!'_ /

_/the corpse on the bed starts upward with the foul dignity of the dead/_

_/her lovely brown curls tumble about a bloodless face like the veil of a mourner; the gash on the neck curls like a scarlet grin on colorless flesh; it splits itself RED and screams with the apparitions – 'MATRICIDE! MATRICIDE!' – the cadaver stretches out an arm of clacking rigor mortis toward its breathing daughter's neck, while the cold dead lips scrabble with its manic Queen's smile – 'Time to die, little little windup doll,' quiet as a lullaby/ _

_/and Liz stands idle as a little little windup doll as Mommy slits her throat all rose petals/ _

_/'But I did it for Patty!'/_

_/the phantoms sing lullabies as they drag her into oblivion/ _

Liz awoke choking on screams.

Patty bent over her, charming brow furrowed beneath the butter-yellow locks, huge eyes singing in the brightness of the new day; her precious hands were coiled about something limp and feathery.

"Look, sis! I killed a pigeon!"

Sunlight poured in glossy shafts through the moldered beams of the chapel.

Liz drew her sister close to her and pretended not to cry.

* * *

She had scaled the mansion nearly a hundred times.

Liz stood before the massive edifice of ivied stone and regal terraces and haunted gargoyles, half-illuminated in the bloody drool of the moon.

"He's supposed to be out tonight – the OWNER, I mean. And the SHINIGAMI's up there, in one of the rooms up top. Once we get it, we'll be set for life, Patty."

Liz fixed resolute eyes on the stolid manor, weirdly placed among the crooked homes and zigzagging apartments; it seemed outdated, somehow, a stately and austere construction, murmuring with all the vileness of the House of Usher. Unnatural plants, green and brown and sometimes purple, clawed their way up the ancient stone face, as though it had sat and festered in vegetative filth for an extraordinary amount of years – (Though, of course, how could that be so? The unchecked ivy of poisonous hue was not native to a desert; nor was the old English manor representative of ruined Death City architecture; so how could this house have possibly stood here for years? No, no – it must have been imported). Shadows hung themselves from the gray cobbled walls, while an insidious dimness crept into the rounded stained windows – though sometimes the dimness was punctured by the flicker of candlelight on the inside windowsill, making vague shapes jump against the colored glass.

Vague shapes, like ghosts and ghouls and phantoms, shifting silently in an unspeakable netherworld of nightmare; waiting; always waiting, with tendril-thin shadow fingers that seize and dripping thorn-teeth that tear sweet flesh –

_No – no, stop it. You have to stop it – no more, no more. _

Liz blinked against the unbearable agony in her brain. She always suspected herself of harboring a fear for apparitions: it was a cloudy, obscure, dismal feeling in the pit of her chest, something uncomfortable meant to be ignored. She could not remember when it started – perhaps it always existed – but somehow her psychology had tied the horror up inextricably with the image of a whore lolling murdered on silk sheets, and now she could not think of her mother without that dull haunted premonition of dead eyes watching.

But lately, something else happened when her mother reeled her ugly memory.

The headaches were persistent: when they first began, they were no more painful than the prick of a needle, faint, but malicious – but how they had built. A mounting inferno, roaring white-hot and wicked inside the walls of her skull, lapping greedily at the tissue of her brain like livid fires, plunging through her temples like the blazing end of a knife: the headaches, the headaches, the headaches – they seemed never to end, their pain never to recede; her mind might as well have been wreathed in a crown of fire – _the torture would not cease. _

The migraines started, however lightly, when she first saw the SHINIGAMI.

Liz had been looking up at the rich man's plaything (perhaps the real Snow White?) draped pretty and defenseless on his throne; watched the eventual OWNER'S olive hand creep over him with all the horrors of suggestion; and then there was the pain in her temple, and then suddenly she was on the filthy floor with Patty gawking down at her, stricken nearly speechless.

_What did he do to me? _

Could it have been him? The porcelain doll with the honey-hollow eyes, limp beneath the caresses of a pugnacious COLLECTOR – had those dismal eyes drifted to her in some indistinct act of revenge and cursed her brain to eternal hell?

Were there not fables that SHINIGAMIS once ruled the world?

_No…no…there's no way. A SHINIGAMI is nothing; nothing but a doll that breathes and moves and talks. He didn't even know I was in the crowd…he couldn't have known what I was thinking. Besides, why should he care if I steal him or not? It's gotta be better than living with a pervert. _

_ No...He's not the reason for this pain…the reason is – _

"Then I can buy as many piggies as I want, sis?"

Liz shut her eyes through the haze of anguish that was her mind, reeling her heavy thoughts back on Patty.

"Yes, Patty. And you can kill them however you like."

"YES! YES!" the younger girl, cute as a cherub, pink-cheeked, bounced on her darling heels, the sky-blue eyes roving like demons, _"Heh, heh, heh – _I'll make 'em go BOOM, BOOM, BOOM and the RED will go all over the walls! It'll be so _fun! Little piggy – little piggy – where'd you're head go, little piggy?_"

_"Shhh –" _Liz hissed frenetically, throwing a nervous gaze toward the still house, but nothing stirred at her sister's joyful shrieks, "And I think you mean BANG, BANG, BANG –"

Patty squeezed her arms around the older girl in an erratic bout of affection, and Liz allowed herself that one brief moment of happiness, almost enough to dampen the screaming agony in her skull. She touched her sister's golden-crowned head with fingers that were subtly maternal and overtly protective, feeling that indescribable swell of purpose well up in her chest.

Liz Thompson knew she had no true reason for living – beautiful, cold, cold, a princess with a gun – but she knew she had no real _point _in this bastardized excuse for life.

It was Patty.

Patty was the purpose – Patty was the _point _in her existence.

_'I want to see Patty smile again – I want to see Patty smile FOR REAL.' _

And she would, oh, she would. The SHINIGAMI would make that happen.

The low gate was twisted and rusty with the force of decay and the courtyard within was a graveyard. Shambling brown grass and an abandon Japanese tea-set left overturned in green mold on a shanty English table all overgrown with wild weeds. There was an Indian fountain, shaped like a weathered old man pouring water over a series of heart-shaped leaves, but where the water should have run was dull and dried-out, and the form of the old carven man was clothed in the white dress of dust. An eclectic display of seemingly pointless items; weird and forgotten bits of a forsaken collection; that was the state of the courtyard.

And then there were the trees, stooped and bent and malformed from the desiccated soil, black, burnt, blasted things, with lank weeping limbs that hung down nakedly, bereft of leaves, groaning like the dragging voices of the murdered in each whip of wind: besides those few sounds, the place was silent, silent – _dead, dead, dead. _

The place was _haunted. _

_No, no…stop it, don't think like that – _

"This way, Patty…" Liz murmured into the blackness of the night, beneath a cracked and grinning moon; and it was then that she heard the telltale rustle of a nearby foot.

"They're here."

"Huh? Who's here?"

Liz's face was grim and expectant.

"STAR."

* * *

"Get _out, _Black*Star. The THOMPSON SISTERS marked this place first."

They were in a spacious living room, a great, oaken, dim chamber, all done up in velvet tapestries and decorated with the massacred heads of animals on burnished plaques. The marble eyes of those dead creatures gazed down on them blindly, condemning them, while a fire shivered and hissed in its ashy grate.

Strangely, the room was devoid of servants.

Where could Noah's men be?

Where was the rest of STAR?

The blue fiend wrung back his lips in that despicable smirk, the foul emerald eyes inlaid with golden stars; the hands clenched in their gauntlets.

"I'm too big to listen to little girls," he sneered at her darkening face, demonic stars blurring into the hatred that was Liz's frigid blue glare, "I guess I'm gonna have to kill for trying to steal my prize."

"Don't flatter yourself," she spat furiously.

Besides her, Patty laughed high and excited, stunningly murderous in her attractive tank: "_Heh, heh, heh." _

Black*Star mirrored her sister's look of avid bloodlust, the stairs in his eyes burning with an irritating confidence. Liz always despised him, a brutish, snarling fool coated in RED, measuring strength in numbers and punches. STAR had size, certainly, but it did _not _have brains – a crew of stumbling, hooting, blood-drinking buffoons, spilling guts and then tripping over tangled intestines – and they were run by the biggest fool of all.

As her sister flashed into PISTOL form with a shriek of violent enthusiasm, Liz swallowed that familiar taste of mud in her mouth: that same sliminess that gathered in her throat when her mother – reeking perfumed smiles – smacked her cheek and crooned their similarities. Yes, that selfsame loath, sultry in its bitterness, overpowering in its strength, flooded her pores now – pitching over the painful blaze gnawing at her temples.

_I'll kill you, Black*Star. _

_I'll kill you the same way I killed the whore. _

After all, STAR once tried to kill Patty, so now Liz would massacre STAR.

She spun the PISTOL – ah, ah, and tell me, tell me who's the fairest one of all? – on pretty, manicured fingers and reeled its nose directly against the boy's forehead.

"The SHINIGAMI is ours."

"Sorry," Black*Star breathed, guttural in his throat, "But I have plans for it."

She saw him act and responded in that infinitesimal pause that exists between two seconds: Black*Star dodged low with his palm outward, intent on ramming her with his usual BIG WAVE, but she skimmed nimbly to the side and avoided the blow.

Her finger yanked back on Patty's trigger, but skimmed and missed the barbarian's cheek, colliding with a slender vase in the alcove somewhere – porcelain fell to the ground like expensive rain.

"Knowing STAR, all you want is to tear it to pieces!"

There was a clatter and a crash as more beautiful objects were thrown and ruined in their altercation: glass crunched glittery to thick RED carpets, polished oak tables were overturned and blasted, sleek little ash trays were chucked in careless pursuit, their black innards trailing like smoke in the air – the groomed butcheries of dead animals fell lopsided from the richly paneled walls and soared to the ground in the tumult of punches and bullets and curses.

The fire sputtered feebly in its grate when Black*Star rammed Liz against its stony grate, leering like a demon.

"That's exactly what I'm gonna do."

"You're going to _destroy _a priceless antique that's worth _millions?" _

The blazing stars glowered over Liz's face. From this (grotesquely) close position, she noticed a peculiar cloudiness in the hard jade pupil, a strange, faint, indiscriminate shadow ringing the edges of his eyes. There was a gray hue and a gauntness about his cheek, a touch of cold snowiness that seemed to drain him of vigor. So, the almighty Black*Star was not as well as he screeched to this blood-darkened world – Liz smirked.

STAR's leader ground his teeth in aggravation, "Hmmph – that thing challenged me the moment it was given the name SHINIGAMI. I'm gonna prove to him that the gods are dead – after I kill _you, _of course –"

She felt Patty grow hot and worried in her palm, but Liz did not worry.

There was one thing she would always have up on Black*Star.

"SHINIGAMI rule is just a faerytale, you idiot."

And she jived her knee directly into his groin.

Black*Star gasped and collapsed – the stars momentarily sputtering in his eyes, a dying galaxy – and he slumped instinctively to his knees, Patty hooting her triumph in her sister's ears: _"Ha-ha! Nice one, sis! You're so awesome!" _

Liz snarled her smile, pretty as a princess until she blew your head off.

"Do you honestly think that little boy would live like this if he was that powerful a creature?"

She could have been back in the whore's bedroom again: there lay her mother, smug in russet curls, all swathed in satin and silk, and her diffident little windup doll with the smiling knife to her unprotected throat. Now she tilted the PISTOL gracefully, slow, slow, to the hunched figure before her, the gemmed eyes full of a shimmering glassiness that was cold, cold, enchanted as Snow White – and who _really _swallowed the apple, after all?

"Goodbye, Black*Star."

The demon on the ground grinned.

"Big stars don't go that easily. _Yo! Hiro! Gimme the girl!"_

_The girl? …what girl? _

But suddenly there was a boy in the alcove, tripping over the desecrated remains of that shattered vase; he flung something silver and glinting at his leader – _the girl? – _and then there was a chain wrapped around Liz's ankle and the floor was running up to meet her face.

She landed on fine rosy palms, hair lovelier than Rapunzel spilling like blonde-brown satin over creamy shoulders.

_What the – hell? _

But that was when she saw her – Black*Star climbed to his feet, donning the pugnacious face of one victoriously smug – but the KUSRIGAMA sitting momentarily in his coarse palms shivered and flashed _became a girl. _Lovely herself, delicate, delicate, the stranger drooped pitiful as a withered flower, the ebony hair washing over a face of careworn beauty, as though she wore the veil of a mourner _(and did the image not recall a corpse in a dream?) _– and her eyes held all the soulless torment of a wraith, drowned deep in the pools of untold horrors, black, black, black.

Liz thought she was staring into the soul of a dead person.

"_Sis? …Sis?" _

But Patty's voice was swallowed up in the netherworld that was the wilted stranger's eyes.

_I'm looking at…a ghost. _

And all at once, her head exploded with agony again.


	14. BEGINNINGS of Something Unpleasant?

**Declaimer: **I own neither _Soul Eater _nor _Faerie Winter _

**A/N: **Okay. The good news…it's finally up. The bad news? **It's about three hours late, which renders my vastly apologetic PMs entirely null-in-void and makes me a total loser.** I'm sure you've heard enough of my weepy apologies, so I'm just going to sort of cringe here and hope you'll sigh and scroll down the page anyway. This week has been awful for me – so much papers and finals and studying. And then today, while I'm a hermit that basically lives in my basement and does nothing but type up these stories (that I love), one of my closest friends talked me into going out with her because she needed to buy a Mother's Day gift for her mom. And I was pretty far in this chapter, so I said okay…but then, of course, when I came back home, I wanted to extend it – and thus the lateness happened.

I'm sure you guys don't believe me, but I'm going to attempt to do better. A**lthough I'm alarmed about this weekend, with it being Mother's Day and all.** *sweat-drop* Oh, will it ever end?

Beyond that, I feel the need to give a **warning! (!) **before I start this chapter. When I posted this story's first chapter, I said in an author's note that there would be **one OC that would "become a main character in the plotline."** (Exact words, haha) **And you guys have all been incredibly wonderful and put up with April thus far.** However – /inhales/ – she's been mostly a background character as of yet and this is the first chapter where I start to get more into her character development/purpose in the plot. So there are a few places where things are from her P.O.V.

Now – I **PROMISE** you – (and this is something much easier to keep than my updating schedule, haha) – that April will **NOT 1) **Overshadow the canon characters in any sort of way **2)** Become a fairy princess/shinigami/most powerful meister-weapon-witch in the world/GOD/Anything else you can think of **3)** Save the day **4)** Become the central focus of the plot.

However…while she will certainly not OWN the plot, she will be a **part **of it… Ah ^^;; I usually keep OCs out of my fanfiction because any vague ideas for an OC I have usually dissipates as I get more involved with the show/book/manga/etc. However, when my sister and I first started developing April, rather than have her dissipate, she just continued to evolve for us – which was a sign that I genuinely cared about her **(this owing a lot to my sister, who is really simply brilliant, btw)** – and I felt her personality could mesh well with this sort of story.

But since I rarely place OCs in fanfics…I'm a little squeamish about it. But I also know I gotta develop a thicker skin, so I decided to go with my gut instinct and include her anyway.

I only put this rant up here because I **acknowledge/understand** the general fear that accompanies an OC character being included in the plot – and I want to let you know I have **NO INTENTION **of having April steal ANYONE'S limelight.** I might as well state here that the eventual heroine/hero of this story (this does NOT mean they will be paired, though) will be Maka Albarn and Death the Kid.** (Heh, could have seen that coming, huh?) However, I'm not gonna make April utterly dead and inactive in the story, because, well…if she was, I just wouldn't have included her at all.

Ah. In all honesty, I felt the need to put this up because I feel bad that after two weeks of stalling, I'm putting up a chapter with an OC-inclusion…I swear, I didn't plan this on purpose. I just needed this to happen here for the plot to unfold in a certain way.

In other news – I have a very long segment from Patty's P.O.V. – a first for me, and I found it very amusing to write!

And this story finally reached 100 pages on my Microsoft Word document! WOOT! –throws spazzy party if anyone's still here –

* * *

**INDIVIDUAL THANKS: **

**Rando-mink:** OMG! *blush* You do me WAY too much justice! THANK YOU! As for your question – the second one. Shinigami are not actually legitimate dolls…this world has just calls them dolls to bring them down. So DTK is being treated like a doll when he's physically exactly the same as he is in canon. /poor boy/

**GrossGirl18: **First, I want to thank you for all your pragmatic responses to my frenetic PMs…they are quite helpful to my spastic mind. X'D Otherwise, ah, I know, Black*Star is a pain in the $$. Don't worry – we all know he'll get his comeuppance eventually. The Thompsons are pretty resourceful and determined.

**DeadlySereneGrace: **WOOT! Patty will be so glad she was mentioned! Haha, thanks for reading.

**SkaleFlapper15: **Most importantly, thanks for always being so supportive and understanding despite my crazy schedule this week. I'm so lucky to have you as a reader! And ah, thank you! x/D Yeah, both had the bad luck to choose the same day…they were both aiming for a day that Noah would be away, so I suppose that's how it all went down. And Black*Star being a b*tch, of course.

**Aras the crazy writer: **Your reviews are always so wonderful and too good to me! Thanks so much for reading! I'll try my hardest not to disappoint you! xD

**AkiraWolfWriter888: **WOW. Omg, thanks so much for the long and detailed review! It's perfectly alright you couldn't review earlier/all the chapters…I understand people are busy. There are still so many things I need to review. ((including some of your stuff)) Gaahhh, I'm out of control. But it really touches me so much that you took the time to look so deeply into things. I adore how you analyzed last chapter. I always have a lot of fun with the princess/Thompson comparison, so I'm thrilled you enjoyed it! And I'm so honored you liked the Maka/Crona bits and the Stein/Spirit ((not implying pairing, haha)) parts as well. I'm not really pleased with the Stein/Spirit section and often wish (if I had the time) that I could go back and revise it a bit, so the fact that you still found something remotely enjoyable about it fills me with happiness. Otherwise – I'm totally aware of the ultra-embarrassing grammar mistakes sprinkled throughout this story. Sometimes at the most "dramatic" ((melodrama)) parts. =_=; Ah…I'm definitely going to fix those eventually – unfortunately, at the moment, I barely have time to get the original chapter up, so I have no time to check/revise old ones for errors. Since I only have one more midterm, however, I'm hoping that things will calm down and I'll be able to. Once again, THANKS for reviewing!

**BlackRose213923: **I'm so honored you think everyone is in character. You have no idea how much that means to me. I find it a very important part of fanfiction! And I'm double honored that you like the story. Thanks so much for your lovely review!

**DemonRailey:** I think I already answered you in my delay PM, but I'll do it again! xD I'm excited you asked about the witches because they will ((eventually)) be HUGE in this story. Since Godless moves about as fast as dripping molasses, they have not made their appearance yet, but that's simply because I like slow, dramatic buildups. They are definitely around – plotting and causing mayhem. And they will ((eventually)) make the lives of many characters a living hell. As for ErikaxFree…OMG! Haha, my sister and me thought we were the only ones who supported that pairing. Well, it'll probably be implied somewhere here xD

**Penny: **I think you're MY champion. Your reviews always save my life. Thanks for being so meticulous and thoughtful and detailed! It really, really means the world to me. The fact that you enjoyed my description makes me all red in the face…gahh, you're too good! THANKS so much! And I shouldn't say things about Liz, but since its pretty explicit around…BINGO! Yes! Headaches are definitely linked to suppressing Bloodstone capabilities. I'm so honored you read closely enough to catch things like that right away! And don't worry at all about not being able to review right away – it happens to everyone, it's ALWAYS happening to me. I have lists of fanfics that I need to review…yours being on that list as well. I'm just honored you read. xD

**Thephoenixblade: **First, thanks for caring enough to give the advice. Second, I totally understand where you're coming from…obviously this chapter was stalled for about two weeks because I did not think what I had was enough/it was ready to be up. And I will always choose to delay a chapter if I feel it's utterly inept. However, on the other hand, my writing actually suffers more if I choose to ignore the deadline. If you look at any of the other stories I've written, most are unfinished. My hiatuses usually begin as innocent delays because I had no structure to my updating; then I abandoned them. I need that pressure to keep myself going. It's just the way I am. If I started making the deadline null-in-void all the time, I would probably fall back into that mindset. As much as I love this story, I know a hiatus could happen – especially when I have so much going on. And I personally believe that writing SOMETHING is always better than writing NOTHING, so my writing would certainly suffer more if I always discredited the deadline. But I understand your point…and I do take the time off when I feel I need it. I certainly did with this chapter. /sweatdrop/ Anyway, the last chapter ((unlike this one)) was actually up on time, so I wasn't even doing my usual frantic-delay-message for that one. And as far as last chapter…don't sweat it. You don't have to like every chapter I write. Personally, I'm never 100% satisfied with my writing ever, but I was actually relatively content with that chapter – more so than the previous ones – and I really enjoyed developing more bits about Liz's past/fears – and as I did **not** have to cut huge chunks out of that chapter due to time restraints, I didn't feel like anything was missing. So don't worry about making me feel bad because I actually liked, and still like, that chapter. And I've always found that you should ultimately write what YOU want, not what others want. I'm sorry you didn't enjoy it, but I know the reality is that I'll never be able to please everyone. I do hope you like this one better, though I have a feeling you won't. It's basically a continuance of last chapter, haha. But here's to hoping! xD

**BowTiesAreCool: **First, NO PROBLEM! When people give long reviews I tend to rant back, haha! I'm so honored you enjoyed reading my response! As usual, you make me blush with your stunning words. You are really way, way too good to me. I really got into the part about Liz murdering her mom – the juxtaposition between her thoughts and the weird narration – so I'm ecstatic you enjoyed it so much. And I'm sure you haven't failed slashes at all! Wah, you are probably just being modest. I'm sure I'll read one of your fanfics and discover your false self-accusations. xD And YES! I'm so thrilled you picked up on me using "faerytale." I have a strange fetish with using old words ((or what looks like old words)) and it makes me glow to see somehow who noticed/also enjoys that approach. And that you didn't think I just spelt the word wrong! /sweatdrop/ Otherwise, in reference to other people claiming your reviews are "childish," I have absolutely no idea what they're talking about. People should just be glad to have you review their stories in general! I believe reviewing a story is a personal experience and one should get to express his/her personality alongside his/her opinion as they write. They make reviews more genuine and interesting. So do whatever you want – of course I have no issue with it! As I said, I'm lucky to just have you reviewing! I'm so honored you're looking forward and I hope I don't disappoint!

**Souliel: **I always adore your reviews…you always put so much time and effort into them. Thank you! You really make me blush with your comments on Patty. I felt I needed to spend more time with her, so I tried to expand on how I write her here. It was very interesting, but I hope it came out…ah…readable. xD I love how you always express the way the story makes you feel and your words on Liz make me feel so grateful for writing this story! It means a lot to me that you sympathize with Liz because I'm trying to get those sorts of feelings across. Thank you! Ahaha, as far as the Black*Star vs. Liz/Patty…this story had coerced me into seeing fight scenes I never imagined before and I found that one particularly amusing. Wah *blush* I'm so honored that you enjoyed it so much! And I don't blame you for siding with Liz and Patty…Black*Star's such an $$ as of yet. Wah, I'm so honored you find this story suspenseful – I hope you enjoy! Thanks for reading!

**Kai-Chan94: **I'm so honored you like the concept. Thanks so much for reading and reviewing! It means so much!

**Hempel's Raven: **First of all, don't feel bad about not being able to review all the time. While I was thrilled to receive your review – because I wasn't sure if you had given up on the story for some reason – I totally understand that people are busy and that things happen and that sometimes your brain is just not working properly enough to drudge up a coherent review. It's a sheer honor to me that you read at all, so don't worry if you can't review all the time! However, this review you've given me is a masterpiece: thank you SO much! I'm thrilled you enjoy my descriptions (I have friends who tell me they are too much, haha) and that you found pleasure in the contrast between the action-y (?) Black*Star vs. Liz/Patty chapters and the more (um?) reflective Maka ones. I promise all will be revealed about Liz and her headaches! It's not a huge spoiler, so it will be out soon. xD Otherwise, it makes me want to squeal with joy that you found the Maka/Crona cute – (I find them their relationship in the show/manga so flippin' sweet) and…DING DING DING! Ahaha, you've got it CORRECT! There will /definitely/ be a love triangle going on: CronaxMakaxSoul. I'm just so evil. /sweatdrop/ I'm also thrilled you find Patty disturbing…I felt like she'd been a little neglected last chapter, besides her random outbursts, thus this chapter attempts to flesh her out a bit more. Also, I'm so overjoyed that you noticed and appreciate the question titles! It amused me for some time when I first started writing this story. Thank you so much! As always, thanks for being such a detailed reviewer and don't sweat it if you can't review right away/ever! I'm so honored you have been with you this far! xD

**Darksilverose: **WHOA. I just don't know what to say! Your review is simply – brilliant. And it came at a time when I was so frustrated with schoolwork…thank you SO much! I'm so honored that you claim I helped lure you into the SE world when you are mostly a Code Geass fanatic. Wah! Soul Eater is so awesome! *does little diddy of victory* I also enjoy Code Geass, but unfortunately – ah – never got around to finishing it as of yet. *dodges rotten tomatos* I plan on doing it eventually though! Your passion for it has revived my interest! Otherwise, I find it so amazing that you took the time to focus on each individual character! I'm honored! I'll try to respond the same way. **Maka:** I CAN'T believe that you never liked Maka! I suppose it's just me, but I've always adored her character ((although I completely understand the DTK interest you threw in there)). I feel so honored that I managed to pique your interest in her character…it makes my heart sing. Yes! Yes, go back and watch all Maka-centric episodes! Ahaha! **Black*Star:** I'm so thrilled you find him badass! I wasn't entirely sure how evil!Black*Star would go over with readers, but I felt that's how he'd be in this world, so I had to stick to my guns. I understand your desires, however, and as we all know Black*Star's a softie deep down ((that sounds REALLY bizarre in the context of this story, haha)), we all know that his "bloodstone" tendencies will start to emerge eventually. I'm so honored that you read into it enough to predict character development. xD **DTK:** I'm thrilled you enjoyed the bits about him! He's my favorite character ((well, him, Crona, and Maka)), which unfortunately for him meant his life would be utterly horrific. LOL. I can't help but laugh hysterically at your comments about "Miss Tara"…because, you know, they are SO true. Tara did essentially do to our Kiddo what fangirls often do to him ((/cough, cough/ look at what this story does to him…)) – and I would NOT be surprised if rabid fangirls overran her for kidnapping our sweet DTK, haha. I ADORE how you mentioned the conversation between Mifune and B*S about the Red Angel because I found that to be a pivotal part in B*S's character development. I'm honored you enjoy the bloodstone/red angel concept…I promise they'll continue to grow! And my sister was SO honored/thrilled with your compliments! THANKS so much! ((And yes, I'm very lucky my sister adores anime as much as I do…haha, maybe you can somehow suck your sister into it?)) Once again, thank you for such a BRILLIANT and DETAILED review! I'm so overly honored! THANKS!

**Chain of Fate: **Thank you for your gorgeous review – I'm so touched the DTK parts moved you that much. It really means so much to me. I hope I do not disappoint! Thanks for reading and reviewing!

* * *

**IN OTHER NEWS, MY SISTER PUT UP YET ANOTHER BEAUTIFUL FANART PIECE FOR THIS STORY. This one deals specifically with Crona and the whole "Freak Show" bit. PLEASE REVIEW – SHE DESERVES IT! **

**I'm going to leave the link here. Please take out spaces:**

h t t p:/ / f u l l m e t a l f a n .com/gallery/26071923#/d3ekgl2

* * *

In OTHER, OTHER NEWS ((oh, will it ever end?)) – **since tomorrow is Mother's Day, I highly doubt I will get the next chapter out. However, I'm thinking it should be here by Monday.** I'm sorry that my schedule has been so topsy-turvy. Between finals and Mother's Day, I've been forced to write in little spurts. However, by Wednesday ((my last final)) it will ALL be over and the schedule will go back to NORMAL!

* * *

"_An owl's talons could tear a person open easily enough –"_

Janni Lee Simner, _Faerie Winter_

**Chapter Thirteen: BEGINNINGS of Something Unpleasant? **

April thanked this godforsaken world everyday that she was _not_ beautiful.

Gripping her calloused fingers to the cold filigree of a wrought-iron windowsill, and April knew she was not beautiful; there was no sweetness in her footstep, nothing lovely in her scowling lips, no conjured flowers in that jarring glare of her mismatched eyes. She was all coarseness and roughness and silent perseverance, plodding heavily through the mud of this ditch called life. She blended well with the dirt of this existence, coated as she was in grime and sweat and RED-slicked crime – no eyes stopped to watch her.

Beautiful people became beautiful things in this world. Pretty, pretty trinkets, they were stripped of souls and gathered up lifeless and glittering into the arms of lecherous criminals. Whole bouquets of beauties, dressed up in snowy pallor and rose petals or shining with rich chocolaty glamour and liquid-dark eyes – whatever sort of attractiveness a person held, it did not matter – once such fineness was sighted, it was watched, hunted, trapped, traded, abused…_desired. _And it was not wholesome to be desired, not here, amid corpse-faces and sickly smiles, amidst damned ghosts of suggestion and unspoken sins that haunt dark places. Beautiful things, smudged and broken, cracked and crushed and caressed in the claws of lust.

Being beautiful turned you into game.

Which spun April's thoughts full circle: She was glad she wasn't pretty.

The ancient ledge crumbled a bit beneath her heel and she slipped, the window's metalwork slicing a bloody path across her palm as she dropped down the wall.

_Shit! _Her fingernails dragged against the cobbles and seized a tangle of ivy, jolting her body to an abrupt halt, precarious feet above the ground; she hung there, breathing deeply, entirely motionless but for the heart that still palpitated wildly in her throat. _Stupid f—cking Black*Star. Right. Go break your f—cking neck climbing a stupid building because I want to play with a dolly. _She reached out a blood-caked palm, groping once more for the iron windowsill ahead, yanking herself up to its height: _This – is – complete – bullshit. _

Ever since that damn samurai showed face, Black*Star's brains had become more addled than usual. He was always prone to murderous pride and violent outbursts, but April usually knew how to wheedle the reasons behind his actions out of him without triggering a homicide. Not this time. Black*Star had dragged himself _and _the girl back into STAR headquarters, looking every bit the stricken demon, his face bloodless, but his body soaked in RED. He never told April what transpired that night, but through Tsubaki's shell-shocked sobs, April deduced that Black*Star lost his first battle.

And somehow this would be alleviated by tearing a toy to pieces.

April had tried to reason with him. SHINIGAMIS were _not _fighters, they were _marionettes, _dolls and playthings; useless, pretty things made of sleek porcelain and yellow gems and black ribbon. They were beautiful, but pointless, glossy, expensive, and richly adorned, but also inert, delicate, and utterly soulless. And what would the massacre of a puppet accomplish? What benefit came from trashing a rich man's plaything? This would only create unnecessary enemies, spark wholly unneeded warfare; spill more blood purposelessly. On a ridiculous and brutal whim, Black*Star was prepared to sacrifice his entire gang – all, all to cradle his injured pride.

_Spill more blood…_

But Black*Star had already slit several throats for porcelain, and April was not risking anymore.

Her entire life was a balancing act on the edge of a knife.

On the one hand, if she complied with their leader's wishes, the likely result would be an ongoing feud with one of the most powerful and pugnacious figures in Death City – _(April felt herself waver dangerously toward the left side of the blade; unbalance threatening to drag her into the black void beneath) – _but on the other hand, refusing his orders meant the definite and immediate termination of anyone who came into contact with him – _(her blood-slick heels, perched so precarious on the knife's edge, now dance, dance, dangles too close to toppling into the graveyard on the right) –_

Either way, she'd fall off the blade and tumble into a mountain of skulls.

_Yeah. No matter what, we're f—cked, so might as well pick the one that stalls killing people. _

After all, whatever was up there in that dim, soundless attic – whatever it was, it was not _alive. _

Fables whispered of some pristine time _before, _in some faraway, mystic golden-sweet era prior to the dreaded DEATH OF DEATH, when SHINIGAMIS supposedly ruled a fair and upright world as glittering monarchs, passing weighty judgments with the sweep of a shining hand, dictating the tangled swill of Life and Death with a smile or a frown. They were superior beings, made of light and air and glimmer, robed in omnipotent mystery; all who saw them loved and worshipped them. All who did not were degenerate and foul.

They were GODS.

_Something that powerful couldn't be kept caged in a sick bastard's cell. _

No, no. April was not sure she even believed in the SHINIGAMI faerytale, but its validity did not matter. All that mattered was that there was no way the thing up in that shadowy room was a legitimate piece of legend. It was a _literal doll – _made of glass and porcelain; a pretty, inanimate, delicate object; a rare bit of rich criminal technology; a replica for something that might not have ever existed.

And Black*Star breaking a toy was better than Black*Star breaking people –

So April – a BLOODSTONE with a balancing act – hoisted herself over the sill and into the room beyond.

* * *

_This little piggy went to the market. _

BANG, BANG, BANG!

_This little piggy stayed home. _

BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!

_This little piggy had roast beef. _

SPLAT, SPLAT, SPLAT!

_This little piggy had none. _

CRACK, CRACK, CRACK!

_And this little piggy – _

BANG

BANG

BANG

_"Went wee-wee-wee, ALL THE WAY HOME!" _

The words were a whirlwind and the whirlwind was RED and the RED was all over, all over, all over.

And over and over and over again!

Patty shrieked the nursery rhyme, some silly little thing Sis once sang to her, back in that room where everything was unhappy. _Right! _That was what she remembered – cramped and black and dirty – she remembered the entire room _frowned. _The oily drapes (Sis had stolen them; some pig-faced vendor on the street) grimaced ugly over the windowpane and the tattered old blanket (Sis had given her it; Patty recalled her sister's limbs convulsing prettily in the dark) glaring up at her through wrinkles and mothballs. She was little then, a devil's smile tacked over cherub lips and a head as sweet as a buttercup nestled on Sis's knee – she had smelled dust and dried blood and other funny things in that sad, sad room: dim and cold as a sepulcher.

Like Snow White! _Snow White! _Sis had read her that story! Once upon a time, some empty-headed, fluff-brained thing of porcelain called itself beautiful – _huh? huh? beauty, huh? Well, what's the big deal with that? What's the big deal with THAT? Sis was beautiful, after all. Sis was more beautiful than Snow White – _but the porcelain-thing so captivated little hairy men in huts that when she died they laid her out all pretty in a glass coffin to watch her rot.

Patty thought that might be fun. To watch things rot.

But the story didn't go that way. Unfortunately, that is.

See, Snow White was still alive.

Though not as lovely as Sis, she still bloomed bright as flower frosted in ice. And her lips were _oh so _delectable, cold, cold to the touch, delicious as faery dust.

Or the apple chunk was simply lodged in her throat.

Either way, the prince who longed to dance with corpses got a live girl and the little hairy men found no solace in bartered glass coffins.

Patty found the whole thing highly disappointing (as the little men who wanted decay must have), but Sis had looked so tired the night she told that story. Gaunt and half-sunken, locked up in that frowning room, with the bruise streaked like muddy make-up beneath her left eye and the princess-caramel-blonde hair all tousled into knotty nooses about her paper-thin face – Sis, fairer than Snow White, had looked tired that night.

So Patty smiled when she heard the story. Smiled, and laughed.

But whenever she thought of that room, that dark, slumberous, forbidding place where the _ugly BITCH that hurt Sis _once caged them – whenever she thought of it, dim and cold as a sepulcher, she remembered Snow White, laying awake and chilly in her translucent coffin, smiling while wicked bearded faces craned over her to watch her die.

She decided their room and Snow White's coffin were synonymous.

And at that thought she laughed and she laughed and she LAUGHED.

And why not keep laughing? Why not laugh until your guts spill out? Why not laugh until you retch up your stomach like a vile dripping fish and you spit up your heart like a shiny RED stone? Why not laugh until someone's screaming and then watch the heads roll like balloons filled with lead? Why not tack that luscious smile over glossy lips and then pull it back in a LAUGH as bloody as a wolf and gobble up the whole rotten world in the sheer hilarity of it all? Hey, hey – why not, why not, WHY NOT?

There was all this fun going around, after all – _fun, fun, fun! _

And, hey, isn't it all _free? _

Heh, heh! La, la! Haha, haha, HA-HA!

Yes! All free! All F-R-E-E! The other day – the other day – her and Sis went to the circus, dipped eagerly under upturned creamy cloth doors, and do you know what they saw? Huh, huh? You wanna know, don't you? Of course you do. She's as cute as a button and the story's hilarious and you can't help thinking that curvy little shape won't tell a story not worth telling. By the way, keep your eyes trained on the petite white hands or you're dead in an instant. She's thinking about killing _you, _you know – that's what sweet blonde angels always think about! Oh, charming!

Anyway, Patty and Sis stepped into cotton-candy delights and saw – a freak! All skeletal, all weak, but he turned the circus into a slaughterhouse! And the fun cost nothing at all! _Woo! Ha-ha, heh-heh, HA! _Wasn't that funny? Isn't that fun? All butchered limbs and buttered popcorn and bloody flagpoles! Ha, ha! Corpses are fun, Patty always thought, blue-lipped and stiff beneath her mutilations; but live bodes are more amusing, wriggling RED beneath the thunderous BOOM of her gun.

Or isn't it BANG?

Oh no, no, no. She distracted herself again. Black*Star just dodged her bullet and she didn't want to miss the slightest chance to see him gored. How lovely, to watch RED flowers burst all over his grimy body, to drink in that delicious fear that clouds over the eyes of a person before death, the slimy crimson spittle that crowns detestable white lips if you shot the torso in the right spot. Oh, fun, fun, fun – Patty certainly did not want to miss _that. _

In situations like this, Patty did not need to distract herself. The adrenaline and explosive furniture and nearly-dead-opponent were enough to keep the angelic curve of her lips screwed satisfyingly upward; not like the other times. The dark moments, the bleak ones, reminiscent of that unhappy room, cold and dim as a sepulcher, she needed to distract herself and smile in those moments – smile through gouts of blood, through the mangled limbs and RED-sobbed circuses and Snow White's clear-colored coffin – because if she forgot to smile then she would have to think about Sis screaming in her sleep.

Or the tears in the chapel this morning –

_But Black*Star's gonna die, die, DIE!_

So she did not have to scrounge up enough blood to smile.

"Goodbye, Black*Star."

That was Sis. She was so sexy, aiming Patty at the murderer's downcast head, her hand so steady, steady, smooth as satin – Cinderella with a gun. Black*Star knelt pale and wheezing at her feet, sore in that spot Sis had kicked him, so silly, so foolish – so _stupid _to think he'd go home whistling with his head all intact after the THOMPSON SISTERS arrived. Almost as stupid as that unnamed boy Patty once met: that one who laughed and called her brainless and thought he'd get a kiss but instead got the sewer for a grave and some water-rats to nibble at his cheek. Teeny yellow teeth and beady red eyes and twitching white whiskers, snuffling and nipping at the clammy flesh of the still-gaping boy. Patty had laughed at that. She still did, actually.

So Black*Star was nearly as stupid, thinking he could win.

After all, Sis wanted that porcelain-thing up in the attic badly. And if Sis wanted it, Patty would go along with the thievery, since she so desperately wanted Sis to smile and stop screaming in her sleep.

The doll itself – a SHINIGAMI, is that what it's called? – only mildly piqued Patty's thoughts. The sight of it reminded her forcibly of Snow White; perhaps even more than the unhappy room that ugly bitch locked them up in. See, its skin was all glossy and sleek and powdery as ice, its eyes all heavy and languid and rich as expensive honey; and its lips were frozen and its breathing delicate and its hair fell in shades of raven-feather-black over the flawless brow, in that same drowsy, useless, idle matter that denoted something pretty and something useless. His body looked like glass bones in the plush Victorian clothes. She wondered what it would be like to snap such bones; the brittle sound it would make, as clear and high as birdsong. And his cute little fingernails – certainly each nail would be cut and filed perfectly – she mused what it would be like to rip each one off the tender pink flesh beneath. The delicious RED that would ooze from the transaction. And those pretty, pretty eyeballs, staring sadly at the world, through a decadent torpor of majestic tragedy. She hoped Sis would let her pluck those eyeballs out. Oh, that would be fun, fun, fun.

But what was really important was that Sis wanted it. And having it might stifle screams at night.

So –

Wait, wait, Patty had distracted herself again.

Who said there was nothing going on it that buttercup-pretty head of hers?

_Why…why hasn't Sis shot me yet? _

Shouldn't Sis have shot her yet? But no – there was a jolt and a tumultuous shift in scenery as suddenly the carpet ran up to their faces like a rich, embroidered wave. She felt her sister's fingers squeeze protectively around her; Black*Star rose up before them like the grinning undead; and a girl quivered beside him, someone tall and elegant, but hunched and shivering, the black hair splayed over the wraithlike face.

_Huh…? Where did she come from? _

_ Oh. _

_ Right! That blonde boy just threw a weapon at him and it turned into a girl!_

Well, that certainly was peculiar. Mildly entertaining, but it would have been more so if a giraffe had been involved. Giraffes were so funny. It'd be fun to break one's neck. (These are what sweet angels think about, you know.)

_Oh well. We'll just kill her too. It won't be so difficult; she looks easy to kill…her eyes say she wants to die. Just like those piggies, right before I gut them – their eyes say they want to die too – HAHA!_

But Sis did not seem to think so. She could feel the tremors rack through her sibling's body, run shiver-like and dreadful through her bones, through her perfect slender fingers – into the PISTOL that was Patty. And though Patty herself did not sense her soul shake – did not experience the slightest quiver – a bitter taste still rose up in her mouth, the sort of flavor that pervaded her tongue and coated her throat when she remembered how Sis had looked – sunken-eyed and derelict and haunted, haunted, haunted – wiping her bloody hands on her skirt and saying, "Mom's gone now, Patty. She won't hurt you anymore. The whore's dead now. Let's go home, Patty. I'll take care of you –"

And Sis _did _take care of her.

But she murdered herself in the process.

Now they lived in an abandoned chapel and Sis screamed up to the mossy rafters in her dreams; screamed like a Rapunzel not-so-quiet in her sleep.

_"Sis…Sis?" _

Patty called frenetically to her, but Sis was not responding. Still, still as the grave, still as Snow White in her clear-colored coffin.

She knew Sis did not like to kill people.

It was alright. Patty thought she enjoyed killing enough for both of them.

But she also knew saying it out loud made Sis sad.

So Patty sewed up cute lips and tacked on false, candied smiles, brilliant as macchiato cherries; she preened her pretty laughter until it reverberated like a cracked church-bell through the cracked skulls of her victims. And she'd keep up the look, she'd don the hyped smiles, all dripping in falsehoods, and it'd be okay, okay – it'd all be _fun. _

But this wasn't fun. "Sis?"

Black*Star was saying something, but Sis was not listening. She was staring at the decrepit eyes of the near-dead girl, a shallow purple lined in an insomniac's bruises. Patty felt the body that was currently a PISTOL tighten with an anxiety that existed beneath plastered smirks.

"I'm coming out, okay Sis?"

Fine. She would kill the girl. Sis could close her eyes.

It would be no different than slitting a piggy's throat.

Oink, oink. _Dead, dead, dead_. Patty snorted her laughter, imaging bloated pink bodies slit open like presents and left floating in water.

Black*Star glowered his grins at her as she transformed, "Looks like your sister couldn't handle my bigness after all. You aren't the only ones who can use weapons, you know."

Sis laughed, hollow-sounding, though her eyes were faraway.

"And – _you _can use _that _little thing? How do you resonate with her? I bet you can barely hold her."

Something dark dropped over Black*Star's brutal features, like a cloud in a thunderstorm. The arrogant eyes shuttered, the stars pulsating, "Eh? Res-oh-nate-ing?" he fumbled over the foreign term, "Whatever that hell that is – I don't need it to use her," the girl shivered like a windblown flower besides him, nearly falling over.

Something haunted Sis's lips; the ghost of a smile.

"Heh – hear that, Patty? The almighty STAR doesn't even know how to resonate."

The poisonous laughter bubbled delicious and sick in her abdomen, burbling up her throat like some slick venom, showering her lips in the glittering ecstasy of sheer taunting: "Ha-_HAH! _STAR doesn't know what resonating is! STAR doesn't know what _RESONATING is! Haha, haha – HAHA!"_

The frail girl hid her face behind lily-pale fingers, apparently weeping.

Black*Star's reaction interested Patty more. His lips pulled back in a snarl like a wild animal, his fingers clenched for want of blood in his gauntlets. The stars in his eyes popped and flared in what must have been a fury potent enough to thunder whole galaxies – and _ah, ah, _how much did Patty long to slit _that_ throat? – then the boy ran toward her, and Sis was suddenly in her hand, a bright and shiny PISTOL, and when Black*Star slammed Patty against the wall, she trained the gun to the pretty little artery pounding in his neck.

"I'll _KILL _you!" he roared, his fingers viselike at her shoulders; Patty laughed at the pain and she laughed at his eyes and she laughed at the thought of his blood falling, RED, RED, RED, all over her; her finger caressing triggers.

"Heh – _HEH!" _And suddenly Black*Star was laughing too. A whole comedy show! Didn't you know? Murder doubles for practical jokes! "You think your _stupid little pistol _could _ever _bring down the _great Black*Star? _My BIG WAVE will kill you before you pull that trigger!_" _

And Patty shrieked her laughter louder and louder and louder because she did not know how to stop –

"_Why are you laughing? Why are you LAUGHING?" _

_HAHA!_

_HAHA!_

_HAHA!_

Butchered hogs and dead boys decomposing in sewer water and rats that creep and kiss at corpses in sludge and a PISTOL trained to Black*Star's throbbing jugular – and he was wondering _what _she was laughing at? This whole thing could be hilarious! The delicious, quivering, infinitesimal pause between seconds – between her pulling Sis's trigger and Black*Star drudging up that black, raw, roaring mass he deemed a soul to blast her to silly smithereens – the adrenaline that pumped through her body was as sweet as an elixir! Death, so close! Murder, so, so near! Her excitement beckoned a fogginess to fill her blazing eyes, a ferocity to screw back the demonic smile on cherubic lips; the laughter to fizz and rupture from her breathless lungs like topsy-turvy potions in a witch's cauldron – ah, ah, a dear little girl princess, a priceless buttercup; so close to death – she longs to kill!

"St – st – oopp –!"

And then the girl who looked like a windblown flower struggled upward, collapsed back on flimsy knees.

"Please…Black*Star…why do you need to do this…? You're going to get what you want _anyway…" _

Sis – who's anxiety for her younger sibling's life Patty could still sense radiating into her soft-peach palm – seemed struck with a new demeanor: icy, realizing, cold, cold. Patty wondered why.

'_No way –'_

"Huh, Sis? What is it?"

'_No way! No way! The TOY SOLDIER! How could we have forgotten her? Patty, _she's _going after the SHINIGAMI – Black*Star's just been a diversion –!' _

Patty swiveled her wide blue gaze back to the laughing stars, her mouth fixed in something that was _not_ a smile. Hard, hard. Murderous.

"What's she talking about? _Spit – it – out, Black*Star. _You're here to distract us?" Her words crawled with something that was not humor.

Black*Star fell into torrents of laughter, grimy palms bruising at angel-sweet shoulders,

"Distraction? _ME?_ No way – I'm _always _the main event. That's why I'm _way _too big to do something as small as pick up a doll. I have _little _people to do that. That's why I'm down here – performing the show – while April gets the SHINIGAMI in the background. I _knew _your attention would be on me – I'm a _big star, _after all."

As if on cue, Patty heard the faintest patter of footsteps on the floor upstairs.

* * *

The gunshots downstairs were deafened.

The gunshots downstairs were deafened and the sight before her wasn't real.

_Thank God. Thank God. Thank God. _

The words trampled through her mind, a mindless mantra; words that dumbly followed one another in the frozen stillness that was her brain as she stared at the thing before her which could not possibly be real – not even here, in this world, in this room, in this dark haven of some sick bastard's twisted dreams –

_Thank God. Thank God. Thank God, I'm not – _

He sat on the cushions, very much alive.

A boy – _it was a live boy! – _crouched sickly over silk cushions, chained to the wall with the glittering steel collar at his neck, like some sleek, groomed, demented, diseased excuse for a pet. The boy was pale as moonlight, so white his skin glowed like mystic pearls in the dark; the eyes held a shady haunted look to them, a rich golden hue that spoke of finest honey or truest jewels buried beneath the blackest oceans; and the hair itself was spun shadows, a color that shone inkier than the dense murk of the room – and he was frail, delicate-seeming, shivering, cocooned in slippery RED silk robes that sometimes slid off his alabaster-shining shoulders. He pressed against the wall, his chains rattling, such a pathetic yet beautiful sight, the cold steel collar around his swanlike neck obviously constricting his vocal chords – he made nothing but gasps and peculiar popping noises.

_Thank God. Thank God. Thank God, I'm not – _

But the GODS were SHINIGAMIS and the SHINIGAMIS were all dead.

So who was there to thank again?

_It was just sheer luck, I guess. Just sheer luck that I'm not – _

Rattle, rattle. April's mismatched eyes riveted to him, a desecrated loveliness. He yanked at his chains in what could only be sheer horror, gaping, still pristine in his nightmares.

The thought tumbled into her mind, full of shock and disgust and chill numbness:

_That – that's the most beautiful person I've ever seen. _

Which was when the boy keeled over and began to vomit blood.

_Oh shit –!_

April rushed toward it, her mind still baffled, a disoriented, fleshly thing trapped in the jaws of sheer denial. There was no way this – this _boy _was a SHINIGAMI. He was beautiful, no doubt; lovely as an organic doll; a luxurious and precious emblem to a rich pervert's home – (she bit her tongue to keep herself from retching) – but he could not be a _true _SHINIGAMI. Those things were meant to be powerful, meant to govern the sway of the world; dictate the stars and the lives of the planets – _how _could someone claim those limitless, omnipotent, faceless beings compatible with this frail, pretty, blood-spitting thing?

No, no. He was just a boy. Just some boy born with the curse of attractiveness; the hands of lust seized him and still cradled him now – locked him away – up in towers like some inverted princess, surrounded by thorny rose stems and crimson-colored petals and swathed in loose clothes and chains. Gave him the silly title SHINIGAMI. Her brain swirled in revulsion of it and she had to bite her tongue harder – taste and swallow the salty copper of her own blood – clench her palms to keep them steady as she slowly drew the blindfold around his stricken golden eyes.

_Just some boy. Just – some – boy. _

Black*Star would rip him to bits in mere seconds.

The idea made her pause, forced her fingers to quit their tinkering with the chains. But she needed to think about that later; anything must be better than _this_ life, after all, even if it was death; that colorless void that absorbs one in murder must seem eternal bliss compared to shadows and dead roses and criminals who adore and stroke you on chains. No. Her first priority was to get the doll – _no, the boy – _get – get whatever he was out of here before the THOMPSON SISTERS discovered STAR's plan and made face.

And they would, too. April hated them on principal, as all STAR members did, but the eldest one was pretty slick. She'd figure it out.

_"Come on – come on –"_

She had stuffed various tools in her pockets from headquarters. So far, nothing appeared to be working, especially not the useless little pin meant to fiddle with the padlock at his throat. April would never understand how certain STAR members used those, delicately prodding the tiny innards of locks until they clicked passively open. It never worked for her, no matter how many times people tried to explain the methods to her.

_Oh, f—ck it. I'm doing this instead. _

She grabbed a wrench and began banging away relentlessly at the spot where the chain met the wall, loosening its grip with each subsequent strike. _Thud – thud – thud. _Consistent, obstinate, patient. This was something April could comprehend – hitting something until it yielded. It was philosophy that worked with most people too, if you were patient enough to try it out.

She needed something she could rely on. She had not expected this, certainly not, but failed missions translated into dead STAR members in April's mind. And she was still lifting the imaginary, but very heavy weight, of enough corpses on her shoulders: the whole nightmarish episode with the samurai and Tsubaki still hung vividly and disturbingly in her mind. Black*Star still wouldn't tell her what happened out there in the desert, beneath that cracked, grinning moon.

As she expected, the wood was old, softer than it ought to be – but even the richest criminal could not avoid the quick decay that everything in this corrupted world fell into – and soon she was able to yank it free from the wall without the help of the wrench –

– the boy moaned and fainted rather anticlimactically –

She was heaving him over her shoulders, the body itself almost depressingly lightweight, but the chain snaked around her shoulders like a cumbersome weight, heavy as the memory of dead corpses, those pale, slack faces that died because she had not thought or said something quick enough. The window still hung open – a wind was shrieking outside it, beckoning her back into the chilly, breathing embrace of a night where that selfsame cracked moon still grinned and bled above her – but then there was a telltale BANG BANG BANG – and April sensed a bullet make collision, not with her, but with the soft, frail, porcelain flesh of the boy – she could feel the rich warmness of his blood trickle like tepid ribbons down her back – but not yet, not yet, not yet – she could not look around, she needed to keep going – the drop from the window yawned and spiraled dizzily, a suddenly sheer fall of cobbled stone and clustered ivy – into old and desecrated gardens –

Her only thought, that dull mantra, as she made what was possibly a suicidal leap out the window:

_Thank God. Thank God. Thank God. _

_Thank God I'm not beautiful. _


	15. EXORCISMS and Violin Strings?

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Soul Eater or "The Raven"

**A/N: **Um, so – _heh – _yeah, I'm not dead. Ahhh – /drizzles of tears/ – honestly, guys, I'm SO sorry. I know it's no excuse because I've been missing my deadline for quite some time, but I assure that I'm sincerely upset about it. It's weird. I had my last final on the eleventh – celebrated my freedom – **and then fell sick**. -_-; Great way to spend your first weeks of vacation, huh? I kept dragging myself up to write this chapter before you – **but unfortunately I didn't feel well enough to concentrate at times, so I ended up delaying. **

I know **I usually always send PMs when I delay**– or at least an apology note – but I felt that I've been doing that so much lately it was becoming harassment (given that so many of my chapters had been delayed). /Sweatdrop, sweatdrop/ And I certainly didn't want to give such a creepy/annoying impression, so I figured I'd just be quiet until I got this up.

However, in pitiful compensation – although this chapter is WAY LATE – it's also MUCH longer than any chapter I've previously written. **Its seventeen pages (well, one line on page eighteen) on Microsoft Word**, and I type in size ten font, Times New Roman (yeah, I like fonts that make me squint, for some reason).

But now I'm **feeling better **and **it's summer **so I'm getting my life **back in order. **I know my word means squat now that I've been late so often – (which makes me want to pull out my hair) – but **starting next week I'll be returning to normal schedule. One update once a week, on Sunday, and if something happens to make me delay, I'll send a PM to you guys to inform you. **

In other news, about the chapter itself…yeah, it's pretty long. /Sweatdrop/ I've been very excited to introduce Soul (which this entire chapter does) because Okubo doesn't get very detailed about his past (except for a few vague details) which gave me ample opportunity to make it as weird as I wanted. DTK and Crona (since I interpret Crona as male – but if he's a she then she's one of my fave females!) are my favorite male SE characters, but I do have a special place in my warped little heart for Soul. I have a lot of plans for him in this story…I'm hoping he starts to bring in the "horror" element in this story that I've technically labeled it under that genre… /awkward grin/

As you guys know, I'm never 100% satisfied with my work, so I can't say I love this chapter, but I don't loathe it either. There are bits that are…decent, bits that I'm not as fond of. I particularly enjoyed writing the flashback scene, but that's probably just because I got to toy around with Soul's family.

Okay, ranted WAY too much. I hope you guys skipped all this useless stuff! /MORE sweatdrops/

**Individual Thanks: **

**Crona Katartist:** First of all – PLEASE don't worry about not reviewing any chapter! Honestly, it's perfectly alright! I understand that you have a life and plenty of things to do and can't always review. On the other hand, I'm truly lucky to have such a passionate reader – and I'm insanely thrilled with your current review – so THANKS! Yes, that last chapter I managed to get up on Saturday – though it was still quite awfully late. :/ Your enthusiastic opening about April honestly had me in euphoria: the fact that you could be so pleased with an event that included an OC! I'm so touched! And the things you said about my writing skills – /brain fizzes/ – you are honestly WAY too kind to me. I'm so, so honored and thank you so, so much for your compliments – it really means the world to me and I don't deserve such praise. But don't be envious – I'm certain you're an amazing writer yourself! I know I shouldn't mention anything for your comment on Chap. 15 here, but I feel like I have to tell you that I'm SO overwhelmed and SO honored that you enjoy reading this story enough that you wanted to write something original. Really, you have NO idea how much that means to me – it REALLY keeps me writing – and also, DON'T put yourself or your writing skills down! I am CERTAIN that your original story is beyond beautiful – and I'm so thrilled your writing! Once again, thank you, thank you, thank you!

**DeadlySereneGrace: **I know, it's sad for our Kiddo. Wah! I'm sorry the next chapter wasn't about him – I'm trying to follow this faint quasi-outline I have in my head about what scene/event/character goes where, and I and it planned that Soul shows up next. I was seriously ignoring him. However, DTK will be showing up VERY soon. Not next chapter (something pivotal will happen between Soul and Maka next chapter), but the one AFTER that. As always, THANKS so much for reading and reviewing!

**GarnetArtist: **Omg! Thank you SO MUCH for your insanely wonderful and touching praise and the BEAUTIFUL WORDS you said about April! My sister and I really spent a lot of time developing her, fleshing out her personality and her flaws, how she would interact with the canons with them all staying IC – and to hear someone blatantly say she's NOT a Mary Sue is phenomenal. THANK YOU FOR YOUR WONDERFUL REVIEW!

**Lil .agent: **Thank you for your detailed and thoughtful review! I'm so BEYOND touched that you actually enjoy April's characters – I don't generally include OCs, but I wanted to give it a shot, and you made the choice TOTALLY worth it. The fact that you don't usually like OCs but made an exception for her is full of mind-blowing spazzy goodness to me. THANK YOU SO MUCH! I'm so incredibly honored. And I'm THRILLED that you're so pleased with the Black*Star plotline – I wasn't sure how the audience would take it, but I find it fascinating to write about! You make me want to blush with your description of him xD And I'm SO overjoyed that you think Liz and Patty are IC! It's beyond touching! Finally~GAH!~your beautiful praise is just TOO good for me! I don't deserve it! THANK YOU SO MUCH!

**Chain of Fate: **Thank you so much for enjoying the chapter! Yes, our poor Kiddo; of course I have to make him suffer. Unfortunately, though he has brief reprieves, he's gonna hit some more hard times as it progresses. /sweatdrops/ I'm so thrilled you loved Patty – I kept really dwelling over every word I used for her because I wanted to capture her zanzy, subtly complex, totally psychopathic (and wonderful!) personality. Thanks for the amazing review!

**2random4words: **THANK YOU! You honestly have no idea how much your words mean to me! Especially that she lacks Mary-Sue-ness!

**GrossGirl18: **1) I did? Oh damn! I really got to go back and fix those stupid typos. I will eventually this summer. 2) I'm sorry! I just get so frustrated with myself…but I'm lucky to have commonsense readers like you! xD 3) I'm incredibly honored that you like April. It really means so much to me. 4) I KNOW! Yes – it's definitely very strange – her whole 'soulless' predicament will be explained in due time as the rest of the story unfolds! And there'll be more chapters with bits from her P.O.V. so her being a bloodstone and a Star member will make sense…or as much sense as she can make. /sweatdrop/

**Darksilverrose: **You are just TOO amazing! Honestly, you always leave me such LONG and BEAUTIFUL reviews! I'm SO honored! I'll answer the same way you set up your review. April: OMG. Your words have TRULY TOUCHED ME BEYOND BELIEF. That you found April natural enough to fit into canon universe…that's so overwhelmingly honoring that all I can do is gawk at you in amazement. THANK YOU! I wish I could find words to say. And your words about her beauty/personality…you have absolutely NO IDEA how much that means to me. You've TOTALLY made it worth it that I included her in this story. Patty: WAH! I am SO COMPLETELY THRILLED that you enjoyed her part that much! I was pretty neurotic about it because I wanted to make sure I got Patty's personality down right – it's weird how people brush her off as one-dimensional and simplistic, but I feel she's actually really difficult to write because there are so many subtle complexities about her. I really wanted to show an inner depth to her and your review totally, totally thrills me because you caught what I was trying to do! And I also agree with you – I don't think Okubo focuses on Patty as much as he could. The poor Thompson Sisters might be overlooked at times, but I feel he's definitely focused on Liz more than our dear friend Patty. Still, she's a fascinating character! Liz: YAY! I'm so overjoyed you thought she was in character! Like Patty, I believe there's more to her than lip gloss and nice nails. And your words about her show that you completely understand what I was trying to do with her. THANK YOU! Finally: OMG ONCE AGAIN! Your praise for April – your words about fave OCs and months – has me to the point of INSANE euphoria! You have NO idea how much those words mean to me! THANK YOU! As for your sister, ah…that is both difficult and unfortunate. /sweatdrop/ I'm quite lucky I have my sister to obsess over anime with, and a few very close friends – but believe me, I know what its likes. I have plenty of friends who find my anime obsession quite bizarre and my parents just raise their eyebrows at me. Anyway, once again, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR WONDERFUL REVIEW!

**SkaleFlapper15: ** Thank you for always being so supportive! You're always so wonderfully kind to me…and your words about last chapter are beyond wonderful. THANK YOU. You don't have any idea how much it means to me that you enjoy the story that much…it keeps me writing it! And OMG THANK YOU (!) for looking at my sister's piece! She really, really appreciates it! I love that picture of Crona! xD

**Souliel: **First, THANK YOU for the lovely words on April. It's so meaningful to me that you enjoy her character despite her not being canon and that you don't think she's Mary-Sue-ish. Ah~I'm so intrigued and thrilled that you like Patty that much! Between the Thompson duo, I'm always afraid that I'm not thunking her personality well enough, so your words really, really mean the world to me. And the thing you said about the fairytale…that means a lot too. I always find fairytales so fun to write about because I love twisting and warping the themes – or just revealing the creepiness that is actually in the (Grimm's) tales – so your words tell me that you truly understand what I was trying to do. On the other hand, I hope Patty hasn't ruined anything for you! /sweatdrop!/ Patty's demented version isn't the only! xD I'm SO glad you noticed the part about Crona and the circus – it will definitely come into play later on in the story; I'm trying to net the huge about of characters I'm writing about together, draw links so that the various subplots will eventually mesh into one big one…hasn't quite happened yet, but it's a slow and painful and consistent climb. Heh. Your words about the descriptions fill me with love and blushes! I'm so overcome – THANK YOU! I always feel awkward when I begin a fight scene, queasy that I'll make it seem cheesy or something, so your words are extremely reassuring. Thank you! And I love that you liked the interaction between B*S and Patty – I found it so intriguing/fun to write – and I agree with you. Patty's laughter would definitely drive Black*Star berserk. Unfortunately, yes, Kid is still being treated like an object – it's a theme that runs throughout the story as well as an internal battle he'll eventually have to face – I just can't help but torture him, it seems, given that he's one of my favorites. /sweatdrop/ Finally, I'm so THRILLED that you still want to read when you finish the chapters! People like you really keep me writing! Thank you SO much! Your reviews are always AMAZING! THANK YOU!

**Thepheonixblade: **Haha! While I still liked the chapter you didn't, I'm thrilled that you enjoyed this one! I'm particularly overjoyed with your review because you asked SO many questions that I find pertinent to this story – questions that quite literally echo the themes of this story and particular characters. THANK YOU so much for liking April's character – really means the world to me – and I'm thrilled you didn't expect her being a bloodstone, since it was supposed to be a little jarring. I wanted the reader to wonder how she could be a part of Star if she was a bloodstone – so I'm so happy you brought that up! As the story develops, these sorts of questions should be answered…so I don't want to say anything here and give something away! Otherwise, THANKS SO MUCH for the bits about Liz/Patty! I absolutely love their relationship and the fact that you enjoy the way I write it is SO meaningful to me! As for your question: "Where does the line for bloodstone fall?" YES! WAH! YES! I'm sorry, I know that seems a random and bizarre outburst, but the inquiry you've raised literally is the CENTRAL CORE of this story. At the beginning, I tried to make it seem that the bloodstone/non-bloodstone lines were clear, but as the story progresses, I wanted it to blur. The fact that you picked up on this is THRILLING to me. So thank you – THANK YOU! As for what you said about family…never underestimate the cruelty of this 'godless' world. /sweatdrop/ Liz and Patty have a beautifully strong bond, but unfortunately, this isn't always the case. As always, thanks for the in depth reviews! I really appreciate it!

**NinjaKiwi96: **WHOA. Just. WHOA. I'm speechless. When I got your reviews – I was literally overwhelmed and overjoyed and disbelieving all at once! Someone who actually likes this story enough to comment on EACH INDIVIDUAL CHAPTER? And you honestly took the time and effort to do that on a CELL PHONE? With BAD CONNECTION? I'm so unbelievably HONORED by your AMAZINGLY THOUGHTFUL and CONSISTENT reviews! You honestly have no idea! I wish I could respond to them all – but unfortunately, I don't have the time, so I'm just gonna try to skim and answer any questions you brought up. Let me just say overall that I REALLY appreciate your comments about the characters being IC, how you noticed and brought up little things that exemplified how they were IC, and that you enjoyed certain ideas – like the words in all caps. Things like that mean the WORLD to me. THANK YOU SO MUCH! Btw, you're totally right about Spirit being a prostitute. Also, I'm thrilled you like April (means so much!) and I'm so glad that you noticed the quote was from Fullmetal! I ADORE that show and it's so cool to see someone else noticed that quote and likes the show! I'm honored you mentioned Tara – I definitely wanted her to be freaky – and that you mentioned DTK in the dress – I found writing that both disturbing and sadly comical all at the same time. As for the Lines of Sanzu – thanks for the accurate information! When I wrote that question in the story, though, it was actually the salesperson saying that. I put it in parentheses because he was saying it offhand, sort of under his breath. I guess I should have been clearer about that. /sweatdrop/ As the Lines of Sanzu are so central to the shinigami, and shinigami are a pretty major theme in this story, I wanted to draw attention to them right away. The fact that people don't know what they mean symbolizes how much the world has forgotten about the 'gods.' But it's really thoughtful that you put the information up! Thanks! Also, I'm really honored that you found my sister's artwork excellent – she appreciates it SO much! THANK YOU! And that you noticed titles…like the chapter title that introduces Liz/Patty, that really means so much! THANKS! I love playing off that song when I refer to the Thompson Sisters and the fact that you noticed it makes me SO happy! The things you said about the Red Angel and Asura are intriguing – but I don't want to give anything away, so I'm not going to say anything here! Oh…also, it's so freakishly amazing and chilling that you mentioned Cirque Du Freak: I literally had JUST picked up the first book and was reading it when your comment came! SO AWESOME! I've actually finished it since then…just the first one, so don't give anything away! I thought it was amazing, so the fact that you aligned Crona's bit to it makes me feel SO honored! Thank you! I'm really glad you enjoyed Liz kicking B*S in the groin xD I found that so funny to write. And yes! I'm pretty sure that Liz/Patty's mom was a whore in the manga – that's what made me want to include and expand on it! Finally…the things you said on your last review. WOW. I truly DO NOT DESERVE the amazingly thoughtful, detailed, overwhelming praise you've given me. OMG. THANK YOU SO MUCH! You have NO IDEA your words mean to me! And PLEASE, don't apologize for short reviews, they were all wonderful! I love that song my Evanescence, so the fact that you find it similar…so chilling, so wonderful. THANK YOU! Honestly, I really can't thank you enough for the amount of time you've given this story!

**Penny: **PLEASE don't apologize for not reviewing right away! I TOTALLY understand you being overwhelmed (been there myself) and I know that you have a (very important) life to lead! Also, feel free to use FFnet (including the review box to my story) as an outlet for stress if it makes you feel better…I know my author's notes have rambled a bit longer than they should have. I'm so thrilled that you notice the quotes at the beginning of each story – and I'm beyond happy that you're so intrigued with this particular one! Faerie Winter is actually a sequel to a book called Bones of Faerie. In all honestly, I actually enjoyed the first book a lot more than the sequel – I put that quote up in the midst of reading the sequel because it weirdly fit with the chapter, and I enjoyed the book, but I found it a bit of a letdown in comparison to the first. On the other hand, I don't want to color your opinion before you even look at the books! If you do decide to read them and ever feel like discussing them, don't feel shy to send me a PM about them or write it in a review! xD Otherwise: OMG! Your words about April touch me right down to my core and mean SO MUCH TO ME. That I shouldn't have any reservations…you are just too amazing. THANK YOU! And I'm overjoyed that you believe she fits well with the narrative – that was the whole point of including her! The fact that you read into and understand the metaphor with the blade so entirely really touches my core. It really shows how much attention and energy you put into reading this story – THANK YOU AGAIN! Also, I'm honored with your words about Liz/B*S's battle banter…I'm always striving to keep people IC and make them not sound cheesy and have effective dialogue, so your words really mean a lot to me. Now…/BLUSH/ I really don't deserve your praise! A genius? Certainly NOT true – but I'm SO honored that you enjoyed the fairytale references! It's really a hobby of mine to throw them in stories and screw around with their themes. You're such an adept reader and the things you noticed about Patty/Liz really make me smile…especially how Liz must feel with having such an – uh? – wild sister. The ideas you thought up will definitely play out through the story! Finally, I'm SO honored that you are excited for the rest of the story! Means so much that you are interested in how it's going to turn out! My lips are sealed about the pairings…some may happen, some may not. I'm a little nervous I'll disappoint some people since everyone is so particular with pairings – but I'm going to stick to my guns! Your comments about it being no pressure really mean a lot to me. /sweatdrop/ I'm going to wrap this up by saying THANK YOU FOR YOUR WONDERFUL REVIEW! And don't think I've forgotten about the stories I need to review for YOU! Especially your beautiful Luke oneshot! It's summer now – IT WILL HAPPEN! Probably sometime tomorrow, but it might be late at night, so you'd probably end up seeing it on Wednesday…but STILL! Once again, thank you, thank you, thank you!

**Lilah09: **I'm so thrilled with your comments – it really means the world that you think I've managed to do something original with the SE universe, but keep everyone canon at the same time! THANK YOU! And what you said about OCs…/GUSHES/…it really means SO MUCH that you've made an exception for your usual distaste for April. You enjoy her character? THANK YOU! I'm so overjoyed you like this story and want to see where it's going! I'm lucky to have a reader like you!

**Aras the crazy writer: **Yes! I assure you, although he's being shunted around like cargo now, Kid will definitely have his shining moments in this fic! Ahaha, I love him too! As always, your love for Ragnarok makes me smile. xD THANKS for the beautiful praise! I don't deserve it! – THANKS!

******I'D JUST LIKE TO SAY HERE THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO APPEASED MY WORRIES ABOUT AN OC-INCLUSION. YOU GUYS REALLY MEAN THE WORLD TO ME. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR PATIENCE AND OPENNESS! **

* * *

"_And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming" _

Edgar Allan Poe, "The Raven"

**Chapter Fourteen: EXCORCISIMS and Violin Strings? **

_things are born in the shadows_

_ in the little catches of light you can't see_

_that thing that's been haunting you? _

_that bloody face in the dark? _

_ the doll with its melted smile? _

_it's all real_

* * *

Soul woke to the ostentatious blaze of late afternoon and that distant crooning in his ear.

Sleep had glued his mouth shut with that dry, bitter, gummy flavor; the kind that always pervades the tongue when one slumbers too long. His limbs and muscles were taut after hours of huddled unconsciousness, his spine screaming its discomfort as he fought to straighten it, as he leaned his naked back against the ancient chilly titles of the wall behind him. He felt, rather apathetically, the bare skin shiver and pucker in gooseflesh, tingling with the tiny teeth of the cold. And the sun outside was bright, too bright, searing against his drooping eyelids like a split yoke, an explosion of ugly yellow that spattered and stained and stabbed his retinas. It coerced little flickering spots of color to float before the dully RED eyes, painted the chamber in a sickly soup of light and murk and hue and shadow. The nausea settled limp and nonchalant in his bones. His head buzzed and wavered.

But his head did more than that.

A room, a BLACK ROOM, existed between the walls of his skull.

Even now, in that hazy just-woken-up state, he could still see the images rotating slowly in his mind, dim and dreary and washed in unspoken crimson curtains. Yes, the drapery fell over everything like blood, stirring weirdly in the motionless air, betraying glimpses of dark wood beneath. Dark wood, ancient locks fringed in greenish decay, old iron panels collapsing and fading in mustiness; stout, rust-clotted hinges that have not moved for a thousand years: DOORS. A whole labyrinth of doors, standing forlorn and locked behind a dozen RED veils, caressed in hidden shadows, waiting to be found – waiting for Soul to unlock them.

He never did.

He knew what waited on the other side.

He heard them moving behind the doors, whispering things. He heard their fingernails scraping on the other side, a low, relentless, dull scratching, the sort a half-dead person makes after being buried alive, now smothered entirely in the tomb, bleeding fingers running slow slow and blind over some unseen darkness before him or her. But he also heard the faint shuffle of their footsteps, always moving, always pacing, always alert; heard the far-off moan of metal traps opening and closing many, many feet beneath him; heard the steady, self-conscious, persistent breathing of some unnatural thing, of someone who always watches and never wants to be found.

He heard their voices, whispering things.

He heard the violin playing.

_This whole thing…this whole thing isn't cool at all. _

Soul Eater Evans was POSSESSED.

He blinked languidly, full of mild disgust for the yellow glare, only to have his vision plunge from the plain plastered walls and wooden floorboards of reality to the sunken shadows and still curtains of the BLACK ROOM in his mind. The sensation only added to his grogginess, his inability to fully register and comprehend his surroundings. Where was he again? What was he doing? Why couldn't he lapse back into that comfortably dark oblivion where the panting sun would stop shedding its manic light over everything?

"Arrghh – "

Soul yawned expansively, sliding an indifferent tongue over rows of razor-sharp teeth. His RED eyes peeled open – away from shadows and curtains – and lingered as pools of blood over the ramshackle place in blasé discontent.

Mornings always lacked style, all slow drudgery and that bad taste in his mouth. There was no jazz in the way garish sunrays threw themselves against the pitted walls, highlighting defects; no rolling beat in the skitters of the rats, writhing their starved bodies into crevices to avoid the rising day; no smooth, addictive tempo to channel into his blood as life sustenance in this bleakly yellow existence deemed today. Oh no, it was all so dull, dull, dull. Crumpled bed-sheets, the color of dirty dishwater. Hunched limbs, stiff and aching as if he slept in a coffin. Blandness, rawness, lifelessness – a monotonous and eternal hangover. That was this life.

And of course the black stitches, marching like long-legged insects up his torso – unremembered, unfamiliar crisscrosses, sewing up an unremembered, unfamiliar gash.

_But what's the point in thinking about that anyway? _

The thought dragged through Soul's mind, dry and uncaring. And it was true. There was no point, no viable point, in dwelling over the macabre stitches, over the weirdly smiling laceration running down his chest. He did not remember how he received either – the wound or its treatment. Nor did he think he ever would. An unsettling mystery, certainly, but everything was unsettling here, in this place, in this graveyard city, and Soul failed to see how playing detective would keep him alive. So the sutures remained obscure, like an un-surfaced nightmare ringing in the back of his subconscious, trailing vague phantom-fingers down his spine: a silent and unbidden reminder that he had absolutely no control over his life.

But it was only one of many reminders.

"Not cool," Soul mumbled; RED eyes on the RED dripping down the wall, "Really, this isn't cool at all."

Somewhere in his mind, behind the curtains in the BLACK ROOM, that same distant crooning sounded.

**_/Ohhh, Soul! Did you think I'd go away so easily?/_**

Hey, hey – didn't anyone tell you?

Soul Eater Evans is POSSESSED.

He watched with sedated displeasure as the blood ran over the wall.

It haunted him, this veil of blood. Like some sort of scarlet-robed apparition, it followed his steps into dreams and awoke him to find RED on the walls. No matter where he woke – no matter what sad, derelict ditch he slunk to in the early hours of the morning, stiff and dead-shouldered, fingers aching from their brutal massacre of dusty piano-keys _– (hey, whoever said that mediocre banging counted as 'music,' anyway?) _– the silent presence of that blood still lingered, waiting for sleep to invade him, watching him with eternally open eyes, biding for him to awake so he could find the motel walls coated in living nightmare.

It was always the same, always, always.

Unholy, the RED liquid flooded over the plaster in individual rivulets, blasphemous channels that arced and interlaced and separated with perfect precision – as if painted by some freakish hand. And those ruby drizzles created an image, always the same, always, always: an ungainly head, grotesquely-shaped; blood-daubed horns, curved like a goat's; the fanged grin, like a monster's – like _his;_ the bulbous nose, as vile and distorted as the entire silhouette.

It was the outline of the DEVIL, of the DEMON, of the THING THAT POSSESSED.

**_/Did you think a few hours of piano playing could shake me off? Oh, I would have thought you had more class! Ha – HA! You'll have to play harder than that, Soul! Come now, why don't you put some BLOOD into it?/_**

"Shut it…just shut up, why don't you?"

But the words spilled useless from him, full of tired apathy.

Still, Soul stood up, as he did every morning, as he would continue to do until that final breath escaped him and his cold corpse was thrown on some side street (really, he didn't expect anything sentimental from strangers), and lifted the bucket full of water at his bedside.

**_/Ah, now, now, Soul. Must we go through this every morning?/_**

The POSSESSED boy remembered a room, littered with dead animal parts.

He decided to ignore the THING in his head.

Soul chucked the water at the wall, relishing its collision, the way the clean water sloshed against the plaster and completely melted the THING's blood-drawn smile. Not that it was ever really there to begin with.

**_/Oh, you foolhardy pianist. Where's the DANGER in your life? Come on, come on! You know that blood's not even really there! It never was! Oh, paranoid boy! Where's your sense of ADVENTURE? If you let these hallucinations get to you –!/_**

Yeah, yeah, he knew he was insane. Blood on the walls and DEMONS in his head and severed violin strings and Soul just _knew_ he was crazy.

"Dammit! Could you shut your damn mouth for a minute?"

Luckily, this motel was a particularly low establishment, so the talking aloud went unnoticed. Soul heard the occupants in other rooms, shrieking and laughing and muttering, most locked away in some surreal realm that only existed in dirty syringes and hard little pills. There certainly was a benefit to living with junkies. You could talk to no one and throw water at blank walls and sleep past noon without drawing the slightest attention to yourself. Addicts were too wrapped up in their own straightjackets, too saturated in their own oddities and peculiarities and general bizarreness to pick up on another person's strange habits.

And not drawing attention to yourself was a plus in Soul's book.

_First rule for living in this godforsaken world…you're on your own. _

But it wasn't always so easy to avoid attention. In fact, when you're a sleek and hip musician – made just a _touch _devil-may-care by shark-smiles and luminous RED eyes – and you lived in a city where music was as forgotten as the moss over a grave – and _oh yeah! _you're still cradled sweet in the lily-fresh arms of youth – and _don't forget! _you hark (however reluctantly) from the ruins of the infamous EVANS MANOR – well, you tend to attract a lot of unwanted attention. Especially from the upper crust.

Rich criminals. Soul found it funny; really, that he called this motel a low establishment, when in reality everywhere was lowly in this labyrinth of sin that was Death City. The only difference was the type of vice that adorned each residence – crass and explicit; sly and subtle – that, and the amount of money that jingled in your pocket. The wealthy were all sharp eyes and taut smiles, daggers hidden behind their back; they made sure the doors their victims screamed behind were fine and polished. They scented their poisons with lovely perfumes or masked their venoms so well in gourmet delights that you never tasted your death in the sauce.

Unfortunately, these people usually found more amusement in Soul than the cruder villains.

Like the time he played for Noah.

The man was a big-shot in Death City, namely for being richer than the gods – which was sort of ironic given that a large portion of his fortune was stolen revenue from the old school formerly run by Lord Death. Though Noah was probably loaded even before THE DEATH OF DEATH – only the avarice of an incredibly wealthy crook could trigger such an unspeakable theft. It made perfect sense: the rich seeking to pad their fortunes, smug-lipped and hungry-eyed, while the rabble ran amok in dirt and drugs and blood.

Soul Eater Evans hated rich people.

This was probably due to being one himself.

Still, Noah's greed managed to rebound on the city in a weirdly positive way. After Lord Death's demise, all order collapsed and a RED-soaked chaos took its place. Wondrous buildings crumbled to debris, fires ravaged lovely cobbled roads; smoke obscured glassy blue skies. Meanwhile, vegetation withered and meat spoiled, water grew tainted with ash and blood – and all the while, Death City's inhabitants danced some blind, mad dance of murder, appreciative of the bodies that accumulated with the rubble, ignorant of their depleted resources. It seemed impossible that this place, so fast, so brutal, so thoughtless, could ever support a currency again.

And without money, people resorted to thievery and massacre to survive.

So when Noah – already endowed with mysterious powers – decided to grasp Lord Death's funds and render himself the richest man in Death City, he decided he might as well use his influence to reintroduce cash into the shambles of the marketplace. Of course, there was no longer a government to back up its value anymore, but Noah's collection of beasts and sadistic smiles were enough to convince people to return to currency. It was merely a way for him to manipulate and exploit people – as Noah himself basically controlled all revenue now; his mansion could be considered a simplistic sort of bank – but his efforts reasserted a semblance of order onto Death City. People again traded paper and coins for food and other goods, though more often people merely stole money for their needs. Still, the returned currency offered the opportunity to buy and sell without cheating, stealing, or killing (though those attributes were often included anyway) and that opportunity gave a pretense of sanity to BLOODSTONES.

Soul had overheard his father telling Wes this once, a long time ago, back when he used to wear the blindfold.

See, the Evans were a family of BLOODSTONES –

Anyway, Soul remembered playing for Noah.

A cavernous chamber with a high, domed ceiling he could barely see – though its ghostly iridescence hinted a construction of diamond panes – and the walls were done up in scarlet-rich wallpaper and shining alabaster pillars. But most luxurious, or most forbidding, were the marble angels that stood on pedestals before each column, white-winged and solemn. They were gloriously sculpted, delicate specimen, so that every shapely limb jumped with realistic muscles, every seeming thread of hair looked soft to the touch, every feather appeared downy and pure as summer clouds.

And every one of them was depicted committing suicide.

Pressing blades to snowy breasts; fitting nooses about pale necks like sacramental wreathes of holly; kissing poisoned leaves of hemlock with hard bloodless lips; milky-white figures fallen prostrate with self-inflicted blows; slit throats and sweet smiles; euphoric tears and bleeding wrists.

_What sort of sicko spends time carving things like this? _

They seemed to follow Soul as he walked, still, still, with death-haunted faces, gaunt stone eyes that saw nothing and yet condemned with cold beauty.

_What sort of sicko _buys _things like this?_

The THING in his head had laughed at that.

The piano stood in the center of the room, a regal thing of blood mahogany, perfectly tuned. The keys glistened like spun-sugar, dipped and sang smooth as butter beneath his fingertips. But despite its finery, its golden pedals and plush seating and poised strings, the instrument felt illicit, chill as a final curtain bow. Noah situated it so that the dead suicidal gaze of each angel fell exactly upon him, and their forlorn eyes seemed to transform his every note, rework the melodies that spilled from his hands, sever each string of sound – his songs felt like his requiem.

But Soul could have dealt with that. Really, he could.

What he could not handle was Noah himself, walking about him in steady circles while he played, examining him. There was a bizarre heat to those glossy dark eyes, some calculating shift in each decisive footfall, each fateful turn of the heel. And his lips, parted dangerously, murmuring faint faint words that dropped soft as feathers in the wild currents of Soul's playing, drowning under crashing notes before he could hear them properly: "Ah, a pianist, what a rare COLLECTOR's ITEM – !" and "If only the teeth didn't disfigure him so – !" and "What remarkable playing….the hair looks so soft – !" Barely heard, the statements descended like a ghost's whispers, only half-there, but their implications blazed RED-hot in the corners of Soul's mind. The gauzy moonlight filtering through the diamond panes above seemed to suffocate him, the footsteps of the rich man like a pounding death-knell, the crimson curtains in the BLACK ROOM in his head flickered disturbingly, and he imagined himself as some sort of semi-broken music box on display, or a freakish boy in a petting zoo, and the music sang high and hysterical in his ears, mounting louder, louder, a verifiable murder of notes, completely out of his control –

And then the cinnamon-brown fingers touched his downy white hair and the music ceased altogether.

"Why have you stopped playing?"

Noah had removed his hand. He was smiling, vague and haunted. Polite.

Soul excused himself from the offered dinner.

In the room he was given for the night – (a sumptuous space of frilled pillows and royal beds and silk tapestries) – Soul was not surprised to hear the telltale _click _of the lock that meant he was a prisoner.

He endured four hours of hellish silence, in which horror butchered his every nerve, before he felt sure the entire mansion was standing still: then he shattered the bolted window with his SCYTHE BLADE and crept along the vines until he reached the ground level.

As Soul expected, Noah had not guessed he was a WEAPON. He assumed a locked door and a fifty-foot drop from the window would be enough to keep him incarcerated. Servants dotted the corridors, surely, but none fathomed the RED-eyed boy-pianist capable of escaping, thus no one was stationed outside his quarters. An alarm shrilled at the breaking glass, but at that point Soul was skidding down the ivied brick, his clawing fingernails slick with blood; and he was crouching in a gutter somewhere, thanking an imaginary god he was born a SCYTHE, when the guards finally realized they needed to search the premises for an escapee.

It seemed no one ever attempted to slip through Noah's netting before. Soul got away on sheer luck, but that luck was padded with a captor's smugness. Noah never imagined his trinkets could escape. After all, once a thing of want ambled so blindly into his maze of desires, there was simply no way it could navigate itself out of those halls. Once ensnared, the object was _his. _

Or so he thought.

And anyway, WEAPONS were rare. No one expected him to be a SCYTHE. It was an advantage.

Still, he knew he was lucky. The pianist was certain that Noah, with his unwholesome assemblage of beasts and strange, soulless servants, could easily track and 'recollect' any lost trinkets if he desired them enough. For once, that huge, fanged mouth – what had his father called it? Ah, yes: _'The blot of the Evans Family'_ – came in handy – Noah had referred to them as some sort of disfigurement. Apparently, no matter how rare a musician's hands (and in this world, the dirt that hits the coffin, the splash the river makes when it receives a corpse, are the only strands of music heard) if the good was damaged, then it was worthless. And that's all Soul really was. A damaged good. An askew music box, cranking out rusty old tunes deemed 'pretty' because they were rare; but otherwise bent and torn, warped at odd angles, exaggerated – blood eyes and shark teeth.

He was only a ghoulish imitation of someone far grander.

_Oh, oh, and Soul remembered. The long, still shadow on the wall, the severed strings of the violin –! _

But that wasn't important. The important fact was – for once in his life – being unworthy benefitted him.

**_/Now, now, Soul. When did you decide to be such a drag? And I thought you were a 'cool guy' – all this moping will ruin your image, won't it?/_**

The voice of the THING in his head snapped Soul back to reality.

"Didn't I tell you to get lost?" He mumbled, aggravated, but the flat tone that left him and the hand that rumpled through his white locks was nonchalant. It was best not to think about these things. About Wes and Noah and the way this world worked. There was no point in it, no point in it at all. Nothing could save this city from its own rot: the buildings were no more than weak spires of corruption, the graves overflowing with half-festered bodies, the roads running like eternal RED rivers. Whether one liked it or not, this was the way things rolled. End of story. No use whining, no use complaining – just suck it up and deal. Survive.

And Soul planned on surviving.

Which was why he needed to limit his thoughts, focus them. On money; on what sort of slime would be amused enough to listen to a dead art – the mediocre clash of his fingers on old ivory keys; on where he could scrounge up his next meal – and on fighting to keep the half-sullied food down; on what crumbling hovel would allow him to spend the day – (he played at night, of course) on how he might sleep with a DEMON in his head and strange stitches on his chest, odd blood in his veins; on how he might close his eyes even with the vague and horrifying memories. Survival. He needed to focus on living – on breathing and eating and sleeping and making money. He moved from one place to the next, like some traveling solo music act, _pathetic_, avoiding danger when he could, using his SCYTHE abilities when he couldn't – he had not managed to transform entirely, but what was the point in that anyway? He had no one to wield him, and doubted he would ever find someone he trusted enough for that kind of transaction. His BLADE arm would suffice. He crouched in bars and slept in dirty apartments, collected whatever smattering of coins and death-dollars he could, and moved on and on and further on, never looking back, never glancing at his sides – pushing blindly past the torture and leers and blood and dying – shuttered against the world.

He had to ignore the screams.

He _had _to.

He needed to ignore the rumors – rich crime chatter, amid tinkles of china and fine blood, subtle whispers about a SHINIGAMI on the BLACK MARKET. "Pale and beautiful," a cruel heiress called it – called _him – _"Pale and beautiful and golden-eyed," and Noah had apparently snatched him up. Soul could not think about it. About the slow smile hitched on that mocha face, about the dark watching eyes. Steady circles, like a vulture picking prey. Locked rooms. Petting fingers. He could not think about it, he could not imagine that boy, pale and beautiful, imprisoned in that man's maze of desires, reduced to a thing of want.

No, no, he couldn't think about it.

After all, what could he really do? Nothing, nothing.

Like _her. _As psychotic as _she_ was –

No. He could not think about _her _either.

_You know, being a BLOODSTONE…it's not cool at all. _

He heard the DEMON chuckle behind crimson curtains.

* * *

_Pst, pst. _

_Did you hear? _

_Hey, hey – hasn't anyone told you? _

_The concert halls were RED with blood that night._

* * *

_He sits at the polished oak seat and balances his fingers over still white keys, among a thousand faces framed in pictures. A thousand smiles, locked up in frozen images. _

_He sits and breathes and feels the instrument beneath him, solid and stately and solemn, feels it because he cannot see it. Blind because the damask kerchief lies across his eyes, patterned RED and white. And he hesitates, because the unseen keys at his fingertips feel icy and unresponsive, because the weal upon his wrist burns hot and irritable, because his teeth are sore and jagged and have grown back despite Dad's insistence they stay flat. _

_He touches a key and a clangor of sound springs forth, like a sea of echoes. He imagines they are voices, the voices kept secreted in the locked picture frames, in the still smiles, in the thousand faces in the thousand portraits that hang on the walls he can't see. _

Ping, ping._ He thinks of portraits, of DEVILS and ANGELS, while his fingers run like water over the keys, while his little foot presses the golden pedal beneath, expertly, unseeingly: _Tap, tap,_ the pedal goes, and it coincides with the unearthly wails that twist from the shiny ivory keys. _

_But – _No, no!_ – he thinks, because the piano is supposed to sound beautiful, but he only makes melodies like a backwards prayer. The weal on the back of his wrist weeps its discontent at motion, spilling RED tears. He ignores it, but still the song remains tainted, reminiscent of something unholy. _

_He's nine years old and he knows he's the DEMON child. _

"_Hey, hey, - ," a voice calls, laughingly, and it's a real voice, not one thought up from stiff picture frames; and this real voice sings a name he'll one day abandon for the outlandish title – 'Soul Eater' – but for now he's merely blinded and bleeding, an unholy child, "Hey, -, what are you still doing inside? Come out! Come out! The roses are in bloom!" _

_His fingers curl like twisted bones over piano keys. _

"_I can't, Wes. Dad told me to practice." _

"_Practice?" His brother's laughter rings ghostlike, somehow less real than the make-believe whispers of a thousand faces in a thousand picture frames, "But you've been at it for hours, little brother. Your playing's perfect. Come outside!" _

_He swallows. He wants to go outside, among the lush white roses that wave bell-like in the breeze, a bit of beauty in the heart of corruption. He can see them, all standing in silken patches, shining moonlight glories. Flowers are girly, but Wes likes them, and white roses aren't depressing because they remind him of clean places, of sunlight and safe smiles. He wants to walk out into the gardens, a tropic area gated away from the fabled city, an apparent nightmare-land of broken turrets and lopsided buildings. The gardens are a surreal protected haven, a palace of lofty green branches and white roses that bow sleepily when his brother passes them._

_But he knows his own footfalls will drag them through the dirt. _

"_I…can't." _

"_Don't be silly," Wes' voice is golden, rich as honey, but it floats lighthearted to the painted ceiling, "Of course you can. You're my brother. Anyway, they'll go gray soon, and then we'll have no reason to go outside." _

_This is true. Dad hardly ever lets them leave the house. Mom never leaves. Still, his fingers lay stiff and deadened over the piano, while his weal drools its RED stuff. He says nothing. _

" _-! Come on! Imagine if we snuck past the garden – you know, into the city?" The words are illicit, haunted with the threat of Dad's wrath, but when Wes speaks them they sound innocently jocund, as delightfully daring as a golden-hearted schoolboy. Flawless, flawless. "Imagine that, huh? The adventure." _

_He hears the footsteps, polite and amiable, then the rush of breath. _

" _You're bleeding!" Further pauses. He feels himself being scrutinized, even if he can't see it, "And you're wearing that stupid blindfold again. Why?" Before he can stop him, his brother does something blasphemous and tugs the kerchief away from blood-colored eyes. "-, this is ridiculous. How do you even play with that thing on?" _

_He can't speak because his voice is caged up in his throat. The room swims into focus, too colorful, too sleek, with a thousand picture frames and a dozen floral vases set up on marble stands, the ceiling painted like heaven, the piano in the corner of the room, the long windows curtained with gauzy veils. _

_Wes comes into focus too. He's thirteen, which is an unlucky number, but he's the ANGEL child, so it's okay. He's lanky for an adolescent and oval-faced, always smiling, with tufts of white hair and misty hazel eyes that speak of green earth. His fingers are dexterous. They play his violin in a saintly way. _

_Wes glares, so he struggles to locate his voice, force it up unworthy lips. _

"…_well, Dad said…" _

"_Not this about your eyes again! And your teeth? Did Dad make you file them down again?" _

It doesn't matter,_ he thinks, but doesn't say. _It doesn't matter. They always grow back.

_But it bothers Wes, the ANGEL child. Pristine, dressed in pale garments, cool-skinned and lovely, with holy fingers that command rosy chords from violin strings. The perfect face clouds over, like a storm in paradise._

"_I'll talk to him, -. I don't know why he keeps doing this. The blindfold, the teeth. There's nothing wrong with you." _

_But he knows this is a lie. He knows he's the DEMON child, gore in his irises and a mouth like the DEVIL. Knows he bit Wes, the ANGEL child, once when he was an infant, knows how much his brother bled. Sees the small scar from it now, a tiny white crescent on a delicate white finger. _

_He knows all the bed-sheets were dyed RED when he was born. Knows he made Mom ill, knows she's cursed for carrying him, unholy, unholy. He slides his tongue along the sharp edges of his fangs, still aching slightly. Yesterday Dad scraped each one flat, but now they are as pointed as some unwholesome beast. _

_He watches Wes, perfect pearly smile, soft hazel eyes. ANGEL child. When he plays the violin, it's like the sky opens up a window in its gloom and truer salvation pours forth – its golden and iridescent – and the notes slide pure as dove-song, purifying wretched hearts and obliterating sin with each immaculate stroke. Silver strings quiver, the slender bow dances, powerful fingers create resplendent beauty. Repentance, peace, deliverance. _

_He watches Wes and swallows back his bitterness. _

"_No. It's okay. Don't say anything to Dad." _

"_But why are you bleeding?"_

_He thinks about Dad. He also thinks about his arm, what it can turn into. What Dad did when he found out. He thinks about Mom, sick and imprisoned in her chambers, screaming. And he thinks about murder, about his reflection in a dingy little mirror in the dark, all sunken RED-eyes and jagged smiles. _

_But he says none of this. Instead, he turns to the ANGEL child and murmurs, _

"_When you play the violin, Wes, you never miss a note. I've missed three today."_

* * *

The shadows rose depraved against the tombstones, laughing.

Soul ignored them, dragging his feet through the graveyard, through the valley of granite stone heads and dilapidated angels, slumbering in moss and broken wings, scarred with age. Their dead eyes stared at him forbiddingly as he moved, olden things that have stood still since the beginning of time, collecting corpses; things that knew and loved all the secrets of death; things that had seen DEATH die – and now they watched him, hollow and silent, and their blank gaze whispered like the wind on his cheek: 'We know you, we know you, and you are not welcomed. This ground is hallowed and you are steeped in blood…unhallowed, unhallowed, unhallowed.'

Why did stone angels follow him?

_Who cares, anyway? _

The hooks dangling overhead screeched a rusty tune in the breeze. Most were ancient and crusted with brown, useless, but a few still hung with severed heads. The faces were indistinguishable at this point, fleshly, bulbous shapes dripping with loose skin, agape mouths, swollen tongues, wispy colorless hair. The smell of rot was unbearable.

"Probably the finest guys in town, huh?" Soul muttered grimly at them, glancing at their wrinkled, decaying mouths, the cracked skulls beneath translucent flesh. He was too numb to feel much horror for them, but the sight was still despicable, and anyway, he was in a sour mood. The hooks and heads and angels seemed mocking to him.

**_/Now, now, Soul. That was childish, don't you think?/_**

The DEMON's shadow leaped up on gravestones, impish, following him. Horns and jagged smiles.

_Shut up. _

It was stupidity, this disappointment. What else had he expected? The long hours, monotonous, drawing his fingers over stiff, half-broken keys, enduring the smoky haze of bars, the odor of sharp liquor, the string of shadowy figures that stumbled over the threshold and fought and swore and killed and laughed and maimed and drank. They acted as though he didn't exist, which suited Soul fine, but apparently his presence did have some sort of significance – because customers increased drastically since his arrival. The bar owner acknowledged it with a baffled air, and even Soul, who tried so hard to quarantine himself in his thoughts and his music, noticed the gradual buildup of business. A few rowdy men swelled to throbbing bar-fights; the lone old man became a crew of wizened strangers with poison in their pockets; the cutthroat woman with the flashing smile grew to a series of backstabbers; the mirthless girl with the haunted eyes came back every day, and brought supposed friends.

Even STAR members began to show up.

Black*Star himself never made an appearance, but his right-hand did at times. He didn't know her name, but the girl was a hardcore alcoholic, dressed in baggy clothes, scowling constantly – and throwing back vodka like it was water. He never saw someone swallow so much RED liquor and still walk straight. It took a lot to get her hammered, but she always did. Didn't stop her from bruising up anyone who went near her, though. With her connection to STAR, her presence evaporated noise and caused crowds to scatter, but she was an angry drunk and anyone who annoyed her ended up with a bloody lip or black eye.

Rumors deemed her Black*Star's 'TOY SOLDIER' because she was apparently an empty carcass of a person with no soul and no brain and no motive outside following the gang-leader's orders.

Soul once wondered idly if people could really live without his namesake. Then he discarded the idea, bored with it and really not caring. After all, whether it was true or not, what did it really matter? What did it really change?

Like the stitches on his chest. What did knowing their origins really matter? What was the point in wondering what had happened to him – if some crook had jacked his organs and then sewn him back up or something? Would knowing the truth alter his life at all – would it make any difference in this hell of existence?

The answer was always the same: _No. _

Anyway, it wasn't stone angels or decapitated heads or crowded bars or the TOY SOLDIER that had him down.

It was – and Soul gritted his teeth at the idiocy of his mood – that no matter how much his piano-playing improved business, he still needed to threaten his boss to get paid.

**_/Ah-ha! Oh, Soul, Soul. Could it be true? Despite that devilish appearance, have you've actually gone soft?/_**

No, no. That couldn't be it. There was no way to explain it, nothing to excuse the strange regret that snagged at his throat or the weighty discomfort that pressed on his body like lead. He could remember it clearly – what had transpired just a few hours ago. The little cigar-smelling room behind the bar, dim and hazy, plastered against the roaches that scuttled inside the walls. The leery man, also little, his bony chin sharp as a knife, licking his crimson lips. Soul asking for his paycheck. The man refusing. Laughing, smug and somewhat drunk. And what could a pianist do, anyway? What could _a pianist_ do – delicate, lily-frail fingers that play pretty over white keys? Really, really, what _could _he do about it? What? What?

And then there was a rush of motion and Soul's SCYTHE BLADE was shining RED and black and its tip was kissing the man's jugular. And the fool was sprawled out on the carpet, bawling like some pathetic, alcohol-sopped child, gasping his pleas, terrified of the alien shifting of flesh and iron blade that was defenseless pianist's arm – and Soul remembered his voice, low in his throat, gritted against fanged scowls: "Give me the money or I slit your throat; give me the money or I slit your throat; give me the money or –" Or? Or? _Or what?_ What would he do? – What _could _he do? And what _was _he, really? Was he really a musician, a family-crafted pianist, full of the delicate intricacies and subtle depth and strange wisdom that came with weaving melody? No, no. That was not him. He loved music, but it detested him, as Dad had. He could never master the golden chords Wes spun so lovingly on violin strings. So what was he? What was he capable of? Was he truly no one? Was he really no more than a runaway rich kid who once wore damask blindfolds and filed down monstrous teeth and dragged clumsy, swollen, bleeding hands over cold ivory keys? Lost, sightless, aching, demonic. Or was he just something nameless, a forgotten victim abandoned in an old house, left slumped in his own blood; awaking to find unanswerable stitches marching up his chest?

Or was he the DEMON?

_Hey, hey – didn't you know?_

_{Soul Eater Evans is POSSESSED!}_

Did he mean it – his SCYTHE at the throbbing vein in the scum's neck? Could he do it? Was he made to slit throats? Soul imagined himself, wiping a cherry-colored glaze off his bladed arm, calmly picking the fat bag of coins from a dead man's pocket, and walking out of the room, smiling his jagged grin, whistling. Like so many others. Like this entire world. That's the way it was, here, in this place. Suck it up. Deal. Survival, survival. A sudden gust of dizziness consumed him, blinded him at the thoughts. A tang of rust-flavored nausea burst on his tongue. What was he, anyway? Who was he? A cool guy, certainly. And the hell did that mean?

**_/Ah – but what makes you so very 'cool,' Soul? What makes you so thrilling among all the rest?/_**

He walked on, straight ahead, past the old glaring angels, the dead shrines, the sighing heads on the hooks. He wanted to stay suave, easy, unaffected. He wondered at the foreign dampness on his palms.

"I didn't kill that man," Soul did not know what prompted him to speak aloud, but he continued, his controlled voice twisting in the wind, "Someone else would have, just to do it. Jacked all the cash, left him dead. But I didn't. I never meant to. I took what I earned, that's it. Besides, that jackass deserved it. After all those hours I spent out there with that cat chick trying to grope me? And I just threatened him. I didn't kill him –"

He was irritated with the sweat on his forehead, the odd thump of his heart.

Cool, cool. He needed to be cool.

_But what the hell did that mean–? _

And that's when it happened.

The dirt caved beneath him.

* * *

Craning his head, Soul saw the cracked cross above him, its leering words.

SID BARRETT

Well, whoever Sid Barrett was, his grave was empty. It wasn't that surprising; tomb-robbers were pretty common. Soul could picture them, pick-thin people who blended well with sludge and shadow, creeping into cemeteries and uprooting festering corpses. Not that they needed to creep. Nobody really cared, honestly. But the tomb-robbers would slide through the rusted bars of the graveyard gate anyway, late at night, cackling to the gnarled trees, as though their forbidden thefts were still illegal things – all for the sheer pleasure of pretending to break an imaginary law.

Soul hated people like that.

Then again, at this moment, Soul hated about everyone.

The DEMON cackled in his ear, but Soul shushed it. "I need to concentrate to get out."

The earth was slippery, loose, crumbling clots of soil. There was no half-buried coffin to stand on – the raiders must have plundered that too – so he dug his toe into a collapsing foothold and attempted to hoist himself up. Unfortunately, the procedure was a little more difficult than it should have been, owing to the polished shoes he was forced to wear with his damn suit. They skidded against the weirdly moist dirt – had it rained lately? or was the dampness from something else? – plunging him straight into the crater the moment he glanced the gnarled roots of the trees above.

_Dammit! Lame stuff like this shouldn't happen to cool guys like me!_

Which was when he heard the footsteps.

Dirtied with the muck of the grave, Soul drew a slow, steely breath and watched as his skin melted into the sleek RED-black of the SCYTHE BLADE. He had wanted to get out without its help, still sour from the threat he'd made with it, the memory of its closeness to the man's pulsing jugular. But if someone else was here, he might as well keep the blade handy. After all, what were the chances of friendly company?

_Haha. _

He jived the sharp edge deep into the earth and shoved his weight upward, just enough to peer crimson eyes over the ledge. He saw the twisted roots of ancient trees, the rumpled brown grass of the graveyard floor, the stony bottoms of other graves – but where was the intruder? In case it came down to confrontation (and in this world, it undoubtedly would), Soul would like to at least glimpse the competition before he was running his blade through the person.

What met his gaze sent a thrill of shock throughout his entire body.

A ghostly figure, sprinting. For a moment – a hand of frost crushed his lungs – he thought it was a stone angel come to life. Swift and slender, it moved regally among the dead, seemingly gliding over the brown grass, the ramshackle graves; each footfall a faint rustle, a phantom echo. The bloody grin of the moon overhead shone ethereal on its skin; its head was a bizarre swirl of light-colored hair, like a lit candle in the wind – its eyes were both surreal and luminous.

Then the figure padded closer and Soul realized it was only the psycho girl with the pigtails.

_This is unbelievable. _

What was that BLOODSTONE girl doing out at this hour? Didn't she realize how dangerous it was? Was she secretly a WEAPON? He doubted it. If she was, he would have seen her abilities when she attempted to rescue that guy at the bar – before he pulled her away. No, no, she was simply blind, idiotic justice, clinging to a crusade that died before it began; a futile cause not remembered or understood in this cesspit of lies and murder and atrocities. Perhaps it was those horrors themselves that drove her to this strange recklessness; the poisonous truth that she could not stem the blood that oozed from this world – the fact that Death City was no more than a festering scab of pus and sin, a dirty thing, infectious.

He remembered pulling her away. He acted on sheer impulse; there was no motive to describe it. Only that she had been so near, and it had been so easy to grab her – and why wouldn't you, when it was that simple? What sort of person let someone run to their death if a single motion could save her?

Well, most people.

She smelled like lavender and lemongrass, and she had whirled on him, a crackling whip of fury. He could still picture that anger, like a storm in green eyes, wild oceans, an undercurrent of energy that seemed impossible to possess. It startled him, assured him that she was crazy – but he could not deny the initial shock of curiosity that glare instilled in him, so rife with a vigor forgotten in this world.

Maka. That was her name, he learned.

_Because she kept hitting me over the head with a book, the weirdo. _

Oh yeah. She read too. Another oddity in Death City. No wonder the girl tried running into a bar-fight: what was the point in living if absolutely no one could ever understand you?

At least his family understood the sanctity of music, before they all died.

**_/Heh. Your little girlie looks a little too far from home. Don't you think?/_**

Soul ignored the THING, but his stomach was in knots. What _was_ she doing outside? Didn't she realize how dangerous it was for BLOODSTONES?

**_/Oh, fickle, Soul! Aren't _you _a BLOODSTONE as well?/_**

"Why are DEMONS constantly asking questions?" he hissed.

**_/Why are _you _so scared for this girl?/_**

Honestly, between this and the unfitting jazz music, Soul thought he might go berserk.

As Maka crept across the graveyard, he noticed a shadow lurking at her back. At first he assumed it was a companion, but quickly abandoned the notion when he saw how stealthily the figure kept to the murk, dodging behind old vaults, hugging close to warped trees. Soul snatched a brief look at its face when a beam of moonshine hit it, and realized it was a wiry male, ghoulish, with alert eyes and a skeletal smile. The pair was about three feet from him now, and Maka still appeared oblivious, moving thoughtfully and unnervingly slowly amongst the headstones. The pair was about three feet from him now, and Maka still appeared oblivious, moving thoughtfully and unnervingly slowly amongst the headstones. She stopped to examine a decrepit angel, forlornly guarding a gray sheet of dust and stone that was a forgotten grave. The stranger behind her stepped nearer, a glint of silver in his hand.

Soul heaved himself out of Sid's grave, the cry springing instinctive from his throat.

"MAK –"

But there was no need for it. Before the name leaped from Soul's lips, the blonde girl whipped out a gloved hand and seized the stranger's wrist. Her fingers twisted deftly and there was a _crick _that sliced across the night as she jerked her stalker's hand sideways, releasing the blade. She spun on spot, faster than Soul could blink, and before he could really register what was going on, she yanked a switchblade from beneath her skirt and slashed it across the stranger's face. A line of scarlet shined in the dark air; the attacker stumbled back blindly, gasping and cursing, and Maka swung up her foot to hit him directly in the midriff. Soul clung to the edge of the grave, kneeling before its opening, his brain numb. The bottoms of her boots were studded with little needles; he saw them wink in the starlight as she kicked, winced as those sharp teeny teeth collided with the stalker's abdomen.

Then the dark figure was wriggling, howling on the some grave and Maka stood over him, spiked shoe pressed against his shoulder.

Her voice, harsh. Echoing over the valley of the dead.

"People like you make me _sick, _you know that? Attacking when your opponent's back is turned!"

The person on the ground whined and begged.

"Is there anyone else with you? IS THERE?"

"N…n…_no!"_

The figure moaned and Maka kicked at him, her blade still in hand. Soul watched blankly as she took a few careful steps back and retrieved the weapon she forced her attacker to drop. Her body was long, thin, and rigid, resilient with a righteous sort of rage and poised in the wind.

Soul was pretty sure his brain had officially turned off.

_Who the hell is this girl? _

**_/Not quite what you bargained for, huh?/_**

It didn't last much longer. Once adequately assured that her stalker was working alone, she stripped him of any hidden weapons and sent him off. Literally nudged him with her boot and hissed, "Get lost!" until the poor fool limped away among the graves.

Maka sighed. She sheathed her knife beneath her skirt and looked somber for a moment.

Then she turned directly on him.

"Who's there? What are you doing by that grave?"

Soul stood up, his mind still buzzing, the DEMON snickering. "It's me. I mean…Soul."

Before he could wonder if she remembered him, Maka answered, "The jerky pianist?"

He scowled. Without anything to say, the words toppled from his lips. 'What are you doing out here, you psychopath? Don't you know how dangerous the city is at night?"

Maka closed the small space between them, marching the three meager feet. Her face looked oddly gaunt in the yellowed moonlight, cradling deep shadows beneath endless green eyes. Abruptly, those eyes did not appear to be the childish, dream-blurred eyes of a senseless crusade, but the fierce, piercing gaze of the Angel of Judgment: lofty and haunted and white-winged, the one who has seen all horrors and yet still believes; the one who watches hearts and studies the darkest crevices of the soul and forgives only those who are worthy of penance.

Then she thrust her hands on her hips and became that same girl that gave him a headache.

"Is that so? And isn't it dangerous for _you _too?"

**_/She has a point/_**

"Shut up," he scowled.

Maka blinked. "What?"

The DEMON cackled.

_I mean it! Shut your damn trap! Cool guys don't look crazy in front of girls!_

**_/Ah, so you _like _the little girlie then? Oh, Soul! How pathetically charming/_**

The THING's preening laugh grated like nails, dripped over him like cloying poison. Soul clenched his shark-toothed jaw tightly, accustomed to speaking aloud after a full year of living with no other company than the DEMON in his head. Now the response burned hot on his tongue, heated with the impulsive humiliation that scorched the back of his neck.

He said the instinctively cool thing:

"Yeah, right. Like I'd ever look at a girl with a chest that flat."

"You _JERK!"_

It happened before he could blink: those gloved hands thudded against his shoulders and he was flying backwards, tripping over the edge, descending back into the empty grave, worms and mud.

"You – _psychopath! _I just climbed out of here!"

"Well, do it again," her smile was sharp as pepper, "Since you _obviously _know everything about Death City and all its dangers."

Soul heard her footsteps walk away. "Great. Freak."

The footsteps ceased. "You're the one who talks to yourself!"

"At least I don't hide weapons in awkward places – like under a skirt!"

He didn't know what made him say it. He needed something to throw back at her.

Soul saw her face, craning over the pilfered grave, white-lipped, stiff, murderous as a poltergeist – the image of the Angel of Judgment barreled worrisomely back into his mind.

"You _looked? CREEP!"_

"I didn't look anywhere –" It was true, but her expression caused the words to crumple to dust in his mouth, "I mean it! You're the one who –"

Why did this girl always twist around everything he said?

Soul swallowed the ashes of his failed comebacks, choosing instead to roll blood-colored eyes and focus on climbing out of this ditch. Again. He released a faint breath and allowed iron to devour flesh, watched his arm elongate and curve painlessly, harden and shimmer and sharpen until it was a SCYTHE rather than a limb.

He jabbed it into the earth, began heaving himself up.

Maka stood at the lip of the crater, her pigtails rustling like honey-colored snakes at her sides. Something had changed about her expression; there was an odd slackness to her mouth, a new light kindling in the already incandescent glow of her gaze.

"You…you're…a…WEAPON…"

She didn't sound frightened, as most people did. Her voice was soft, soft.

Soul hoisted out of Sid's desecrated resting-place and surveyed her suspiciously, "Yes."

The girl made a compulsive motion. Suddenly, she grabbed the sleeve of his suit, her clutch as unbreakable as steel. She gawked at him, full of that same crackling energy that was both alluring and alarming. She was so near and so still that he could smell the hint of lavender and lemongrass when he breathed.

"I'm a MEISTER."

"…what?"

"A MEISTER! You're a BLOODSTONE, aren't you? Yes. I know you are. You're a jerk, but you tried to call out to me when that guy pulled out a knife. I heard you. Don't you get it? We could be _partners!"_

The euphoria poured so richly from her that Soul felt nearly dazzled.

Then he words slammed into him.

'_MEISTER?' What the hell does that mean? And 'partners?' Okay, that can't be what it sounds like… _

_Why is this girl a complete lunatic? _

"I have no idea what you're talking about! And I –" he flung the retort defensively, heart hammering, "I'm not a BLOODSTONE," he couldn't let people know; BLOODSTONES were vulnerable; lambs to the slaughter, "Besides, you push me into a grave and now you want to pursue some sort of relationship? Why the hell would I say yes?"

Maka puckered her lips in a look of sour disgust. "I don't want to date you, you idiot. How could you be a WEAPON and not know what a MEISTER is? A MEISTER is the person who _wields _weapons."

**_/Ooh! How interesting! Oh, this might be the adventure we've been looking for, Soul!/_**

But suddenly Soul was somewhere else. A memory, a few years back, dim and cold as that forgotten autumn. In the city Dad never let them enter. Until now, until now. And someone he knew very well stood over him, somebody perfect, swathed in the strange colors of a dead twilight, purple and gold, painting him unreal. And Soul lay hunched in the glittering ruins, glass shards raining down, down, down on him, fine and iridescent as hail, cutting at his skin like blood-kissing snowflakes. Why was he here again, huddled in blood and dropping shards? Oh, yes. The transparent cupboard, shattered; and the saintly hand of that person painted in twilight – he had shoved him. And now the voice of that person he knew, long ago, long ago, insidious as dusk in his ear: "I know you hate me, Soul. I know you've always hated me. I know you want me DEAD, Soul, so why don't you DO it? Why don't you kill me, Soul? Isn't that what WEAPONS do? Kill me – KILL ME!" Crouched in blood and glass, and Soul heard himself respond in a voice that was mangled and rough and ringing even in remembrance, "Stop it – Stop it – What's wrong with you? _What's wrong with you, Wes? Stop it! Stop it!"_

"No," Soul said, and reality crashed brutal all around him.

Maka's eyes were like green lasers, "Listen –"

He thought of a shadow on a wall in a faraway memory, hanging.

"No, _you _listen! You can't save this world, Maka, you can't save _anyone_ –! Don't you get it? Death City is _dead – everyone is dead! _There's no point in fighting a battle we've already lost! I said it once, I'll say it again: _Go home, BLOODSTONE. _I refuse to be a part of some crazy crusade that will only get us killed."

Her face had all the cold elegance of a violin, its strings severed.

Soul thought he would hear her voice as he turned, but the only sound was her footfalls, light as feathers as they walked away.

* * *

_Hey, hey – didn't you hear? _

_Don't you know? Don't you know what happened to the Evans family? _

_They were all murdered, weren't they? Didn't they all die? _

_It was a BLOODBATH! _

_{I found it rather dull}_


	16. MURDER in the White Garden?

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Soul Eater or Rebecca Loebe's "Siren."

**A/N: **So – um – ta-da! I'm actually NOT dead! /tries to duck being hit by a ton of bricks, which she thoroughly deserves/ Okay, okay, I'm surprisingly going to attempt to explain things in a mature way.

I would begin apologizing, but I know it will look very two-faced and shallow, so I'll spare you that ridiculousness. I realize last chapter (what? Approximately four weeks ago?) I said I was going back to my usual update-or-PM spiel, and I clearly didn't. **It's pretty much unforgiveable and I really, really regret that it happened – but I can't take it back, so I'm just going to have to let it go.** T.T

What happened is this…I thought I would have more free time on summer vacation (that would be logical, right?), but weirdly, I don't. I came up with schedules and deadlines during the school year because they kept me updating in a timely matter – but for some reason the Sunday update isn't being conducive to my summer life. And that's because the rest of my life outside of fanfiction seems to have **no order whatsoever. **People kept randomly throwing things at me – I won't find out till the day of, but I'll be asked to babysit, or told I have a family party to attend, or a friend will tell me that his/her birthday party is coming up – or a sleepover will spring on me – and all these random little things will pile up and keep me from writing as much as I want or as well as I want.

So, the first time I missed an update due to this, I was really ashamed since the last chapter took so long to show up. So ashamed that I was too embarrassed to send out a PM. I thought I could get it out pretty quickly – I just had to rush things. Bad choice. **Things sort of spiraled out of control.** Because pretty much after that I ended up going away for an anime convention and my life consisted of **1) Preparing for said convention, 2) Attending said convention and, 3) Getting sick after said convention. I was writing in the midst of all this (except when I was actually away…I was staying in a hotel and had no computer T.T), but I wasn't getting as far as I usually do and I wasn't happy with what I had.** And like I alluded to, once I came back from the convention, I was sick and too tired and nauseous to do much more than stare at the computer screen.

Not to mention…it's weird. During the winter, I felt content sending out short chapters or chopping a chapter off earlier than planned because I knew I wasn't going to get to touch the story again until the next weekend. But now, in the summertime, (even though I still don't have as much time to write as I'd like) since I'm not in school anymore and can scrape a few hours each day, I felt I had no excuse to stop a chapter before I originally planned. But this is not necessarily a good thing because I'm **SUCH A SLOW WRITER** and it takes me an exceedingly long time to feel pleased with what I have –** so this, plus a crazy disorganized schedule, made it very difficult to comply with my deadline. **

While everything I'm saying is true, I realize they shouldn't have gotten in the way of my promises and not at least sending out a PM was **highly immature**. **Basically, I overestimated both myself and the amount of time I had to write. This incredible delay was mostly caused because I have no order to my life – I never know when I'm going to be busy or not, so it makes it really hard for me to plan when to sit down and write. And then, when I do, it takes me forever to get something out because I'm really picky. **

I **AM** going to attempt to solve this, but you don't have to take my word for it, because I've broken my promises so many times already. :( To do this, however, I'll need to make a couple of changes. **Since the Sunday update is obviously not working out, I'll need to change it. Unfortunately, I think I need to extend the amount of time given from one week to TWO WEEKS – so instead of updating "every week," I'll be updating "every two weeks." **I think with the extension, the actual day I update won't matter – as long as I have more time to write – but I still have this creeping feeling that it won't work unless I change the day too. **I sort of want to make it Friday because this is the day I'm updating – so I'll have two perfect weeks this time before next update. However, if any of you have any preference – please tell me. I will take your days into consideration. ^^ **

**And I'm planning on picking back up the idea of PMing readers if the story can't be updated on time (yes, no matter how humiliated I am with myself this time!)** …once again, not that you'd believe me.

**I know I contacted some of you at the beginning of this week and told you I was updated Monday/Tuesday morning…**and once again I'm **embarrassed to admit it didn't come up. **It was literally the day after the convention (Monday) that I contacted you guys – and I really (though you won't believe me and I don't blame you for not) had every intention of updating, but I was still sort of getting over being sick and I actually relapsed. **Literally, I was trying to wrap everything up but I was in too much pain to concentration – bad stomach cramps.** Then when I felt better I looked at what I had written and wasn't satisfied with what was there – and hey, after all the time you guys spent waiting, I thought you at least deserved a half-decent chapter. I'm still kind of getting over being sick…its weird, my stomach has been very squeamish lately (which is funny, considering there's a fair amount of gore in this chapter).

I'm going to end this by saying **I'm going to actively try organizing my life (ie: make lists, plan things in advance, wake up earlier, etc) in order to keep to my new updating schedule. **As my readers you have **absolutely no reason to believe me **at this point and I **totally understand if you've given up on this story. I take responsibility for my immaturity – and I know the only way to fix this issue is by updating in a timely matter. **

Since I've already written so much, I'm not going to take up more space talking about the chapter…/sweatdrop/…its exceedingly long (even longer than the last one!)…I'm not sure if it's TOO long or not. There are pieces I'm pleased with. The ending – well, I've been waiting for that thing to happen for a while now – but I'm not happy with the way I wrote it. But then again – that's the way I always am.

If anyone's still reading~please enjoy!

* * *

**Individual Thanks: **

**Winrie McGeeky: **I'm so thrilled that reading last chapter made you rethink Soul. I'll admit, when I first watched SE, I paid more attention to other characters than him – but after spending so much time writing about him, he's actually grown into one of my favorite characters…but then, I really starting to sort of love everybody – even characters that originally got on my nerves! O-o! As for your beautiful compliments – OMG! I really, REALLY do not deserve your praise…especially not after being so stupid and not updating/PMing for such a long time. THANKS SO MUCH. And I'm CERTAIN your original work is fabulous…I'm incredibly honored. I can't wait to see how your OC story goes. ^^

**DeadlySereneGrace: **THANKS! Woooo! I'm so excited you found parts creepy – it's weird that I often try to write creepy stuff when in reality I'm such a chicken (literally, I watch a scary movie or read a chain letter and I can't sleep…my friends laugh at me), but I'm so happy it had the desired effect!

**DemonRaily: **I'll admit you are right about the PMs…they do take a lot of time. I've thought about just reposting the chapter with a new message saying that next chapter will be delayed, but I already have so much gunking the documents down (my author's notes are always too long)…so that's what keeps me from doing that. I'm really thrilled that you enjoyed last chapter and found Soul's background okay. That was my favorite part to write – lol probably because I got to toy around with it as much as I want (Okubo is so blessedly obscure on Soul's past). And yes! I did mention Blair. She'll show up more outright in later chapters. I want to try as hard as I can to mention as much people as I can from the actual SE series – to really make the AU see "authentic" and show how Lord Death's "fall" has affected everyone. Haha, I always find your reviews interesting because you bring up things that the story suggests or leads up to but doesn't say outright. I can tell that when you read you really think about the state of this world and what it means to the SE universe and that means a lot. Now, I'll admit that I've never been exactly thrilled with Blair's character – I mean, I don't want her to die or anything – but she's never been my #1 fav. However, your commentary does bring up a lot of true stuff: even without Soul Studies, she'd have pretty good control of her abilities…since she doesn't need Shibusen to cultivate them. So, you have a point. She definitely would be the most powerful in Death City at the moment. However, as far as Black*Star goes…he's never been one of my favorites either (though I like him a lot more now that I've written from his POV), so I don't say this out of love/loyalty to him – but I wouldn't underestimate his raw talent. I know he doesn't have Tsubaki right now, but he has a really good grip on his soul wavelength even without Shibusen. He could definitely hold his own against her. But I won't deny that Blair has a lot of power in this world! Nice observation! As for Risa/Arisa…for the same reasons as Blair, you're right, they would be able pretty competent in this sort of world. The manga doesn't really get specific on their personalities outside of them working in Chupa Cabra, though, so it's hard for me to gauge what they'd be doing in this situation. They seem relatively benign to me, so I agree with you, these particular witches are probably using their magic to preserve the world as much as they can. However – as for kingpin figures – (ie: Medusa, Arachne), they have found other ways to survive without necessarily helping other people out. Gonna keep it mysterious here. I know I have yet to mention them – but I swear they will play major roles in this story. I'm just leading up to them because they are supposed to be really – ah – climatic (?) parts of the story. As for Asura…woot! I'm really happy you don't think the Red Angel is Asura! Asura will also play a big role in this story (especially for Kid), but I don't want to give too much away…all I'll say is that he may be under Shibusen…or sleeping somewhere else…or…who knows?... lol etc, etc. Wow – this comment is exceedingly long! Sorry about that – you gave me a lot to think about! Thanks for bringing so much to your review! And most of all, thanks for reading!

**GrossGirl18: **Ah…but I have so many reasons to beat myself up, as you most assuredly know now! But yes…Soul can be very stupid. He continues to be pretty ridiculous this chapter. If you're still willing to read, I hope you enjoy!

**N: **Yay! I was happy Soul got some action too. He gets some more here.

**RhythmWeaver: **It's so cool to talk to another creative writer! Haha, that's exactly what I want to do with my life too…write/publish and all that! So I find it deeply honoring that, as a creative writer, you enjoyed reading this story! It really means a lot to me! And I'm so thrilled you think its heating up…it takes me a long time to get things going with all my stories, mostly because I like to dwell on character development so much and I find leading up to things makes the story more satisfying in my mind. But then sometimes I start to get worried that I'm waiting too long. Ack! However – if you decide to still read – this chapter definitely gets the ball rolling. FINALLY. But honestly, I'm so excited that you enjoy my character development and that you don't think I draw out the reader's ignorance too long – it makes me so happy! THANK YOU! Also, I'm really thrilled that you picked up on two things: how Soul's past affects his present and how abusive his father was. I was really trying to get those two elements out last chapter and your words really show that I managed to get that out there. THANKS so much! You have no idea how excited that makes me!

**AkiraWolfWriter888: **If you decide to still read, I hope you enjoy this chapter! It's also quite long (probably too long)! I'm really, really happy that you enjoyed Soul's background interpretation…I've always been pretty fascinated in it. Especially Wes. And I'm THRILLED that you enjoyed April – especially when you usually don't like OCs! THANK YOU! I have every intention of reviewing your stuff, btw! As always, I'm just a slowpoke because I want my reviews to be just right.

**NinjaKiwi96: **I always love how you pick out specific things you like in each chapter. I'm so happy that you like the demon/devil characterization and that you enjoyed how Maka discovered Soul being a weapon. I pictured it for a while, but didn't know how happy I was with the way I actually wrote it…your words console me. I'm also quite honored you like all the Evans development – especially the Wes/Soul stuff – that was my favorite part to write about! THANKS! If you still read, I hope you enjoy this chapter!

**Souliel: **And I love getting reviews from you. I don't blame you if you've given up on this story, but I'd love to hear from you again! I'm really honored that you enjoyed the way his "cool" ideals are mixed up with the state of this world…I was really trying to go for that and hoping it came out clearly. I also find Soul's scar highly disturbing – I'm sure Soul's bothered by it too – he just strikes me as someone who tries to deal with things by not dealing with them at all: ie, blowing stuff off. Ya'know, since he's so apathetic all the time? But I'm thrilled you found it alarming, since I was trying to go for that! And it makes me really happy that you found Noah creepy…not that I'd ever want to creep you out, but I was trying to make Noah seem as unpleasant as humanly possible. As always, I'm so honored you thought the Maka/Soul interaction was in character. They meet under really different circumstances in this chapter…but I'm hoping they're still IC because I find that very central to any sort of fanfiction. It really makes my heart sing that you thought so. THANK YOU!

**SkaleFlapper15: ** Please don't worry about taking so long to comment…it takes me way too long to update for you to feel bad about something like that. I'm just honored that you read/review at all. You always give me comments that are WAY too good for me…I'm THRILLED that you like how I write Soul and the other characters. Honestly, I really, really am honored! And I'm so excited that you enjoyed Soul's past – as I've said in other responses – that was my favorite part to write! And I will continue to explore it…though this chapter goes a little more into Maka than Soul. Still – you're freaking amazing – THANK YOU! I really hope you continue reading…though I don't blame you if you've stopped reading.

**Aras the crazy writer: **Ahaha, yes, I find crazy people quite fun to write about! I continue to sort of play around with that stuff here…I hope you enjoy! And WOOT! I'm glad I finally got around to writing about your favorite character – poor Soul, I really bully him a lot in this story. Especially this chapter, though Maka gets thunked pretty hard too. Haha – there's even a little bit of Ragnarok in here for you, though unfortunately not a lot. But he will continue to show up! THANKS for always commenting…I hope you enjoy this chapter if you decide to continue reading this obnoxiously delayed story!

**Girl .Interpreted: **I'm so beyond honored that you've enjoyed the story this much. I'm really thrilled that you like Kid's development the best – his point in this plot actually interests me the most, but maybe because I have such high expectations on how I want his bits to go – I usually get disappointed with his chapters. The fact that you enjoy them that much really speaks volumes to me. And OMG! I'm SO thrilled that you like my pacing that much! I often get worried if I'm going to slow for the readers – if I'm bogging them down or something, but I want to make sure the characters are fully developed. I love to explore their minds and try to help the reader really see into their head and feel what they are doing. Of course, it can always go too far. However…I'm SO completely honored that you've called my writing "musical and clean"…wow, omg…no one has ever used those words to describe a story I've written before. THANK YOU SO MUCH! If you decide to keep reading, I hope you enjoy!

* * *

"_I'm haunted like a house; I've been rattled like a chain. You have woken up my ghosts, _

_You have given them a name." _

Rebecca Loebe, "Siren"

**Chapter Fifteen: MURDER in the White Garden? **

It is naïve to assume anyone born into a godless world could be unscarred.

* * *

_The target must be within the age range of twelve to twenty years. _

_The target must possess blonde hair. _

_The target must be watched for a three hundred and sixty five (365) days. _

_TARGET LOCATED_

* * *

Maka breathed in the scent of dead irises and frowned.

She touched the shriveled ends of a petal, sighing as the purple leaf fell to dust on her fingertips. Her eyes watched the beauty die in her hands, but her mind saw the death of something else. Perhaps it was the world, vast and ruined and derelict, riddled as it was with pointless slaughter; perhaps she simply watched the sad, sluggish decay that played out before her every day, at every moment, in every infinitesimal second of her existence. Perhaps it was life she saw dwindling, swirling like gray water down a polluted drain. Or innocence, warped and tainted, crawling to its own suicide. Or perhaps…

Perhaps her dreams, fine and delicate as glass. Crushed. Broken glitter at her feet.

_No, no. _

Maka seized a breath, jerking her hand away from the flowerpot and something _did _break. The chipped vase teetered at her violent motion – one of its deceased inhabitants accidentally tugged as she pulled her touch away – and now it tumbled from the windowsill, dirt and plants and ceramic, cracking at her toes. The irises looked like lame things, shredded bits of purple and green, drowned in a sea of blackish soil. They could have been weeds.

_Great. Just – great. _

She sucked at a tiny cut she somehow received from the descending pot, tasting the bitter salt of her blood.

This was all some ridiculous metaphor for her life.

Maka knelt down on her bedroom floor to pick up the shards, working slowly and rhythmically. If only Crona was a WEAPON. Then this whole situation wouldn't be happening. There would be no wrenching disappointment in her chest, no stone in her heart. The gangly gray-faced boy who was so pure, so clean, his soul a thing of singing crystal; she knew matters would be different if she could wield him. That sweet boy with his nervous smile and those frail lights in his eyes – if only they could work together, if only they could clasp hands and souls, if only they could work as one mind and one body – then they could embark upon the most incredible crusade imaginable. Nearly a month had passed, and more swiftly now, after weeks and weeks of nightly visits, his tentative voice and shy manner were stealing her trust completely. She was his friend, but he was hers as well; a bruised emblem of a rotted world, but a kernel of surviving innocence, the little dregs of goodness that crouched unbidden in the shadows of sin.

_But even if Crona was a WEAPON…could you really fight with him? _

Maka continued to frown, tipping the broken bits of flowerpot into a wastepaper basket.

She thought there was something strong in Crona. Clinging deep in his wiry frame, unseen, unheard, unnoticed, there was a miniscule ball of resistance that kept him alive in the face of sheer horror. How else could such a fragile, broken creature subsist in this world? What but pure willpower and determination could bolster those bleary eyes to open to mornings of murder – what else could make him breathe the bloody breaths of tainted days? No, no, there was something there, she knew it – something buried beneath the translucent skin and protruding ribs and mangled bruises – some quiet thing of strength generated from his core.

But it was buried deep, and Crona was almost dying.

He was the sort of person Maka needed to protect. It was not a desire, not an idle wish. The urge to shield and comfort him was an instinct, something intrinsic and inevitable, vital as the blood in her veins. It rushed to her heart and gave it purpose, a meaning to beat – it gave her life. And he was so small, so shaking and tender, so beaten and scared of the world; so fearful of everything. Maka spent so many nights merely holding him while he shivered and cried, rocking him into a tremulous sleep, watching him twitch and sob in bad dreams. He murmured names she did not recognize and mentioned things she did not understand; he moaned about locked doors and dark places and pain; he begged for understanding, and always more time, more time, pleaded that he was not ready, that he could not handle whatever task, that he was unable, inept. He awoke screaming and sweating in the chill murk of the night, suffocated with terror, a pitiful huddle of limbs in her lap – and she needed to whisper and sway and stroke pink locks for hours to get him to fall into a relaxed state of tears.

Dr. Stein never entered his room. Apparently, these night-fits were normal.

The very thought made Maka angry, a sour taste rising up from her stomach to throttle her throat.

_He refuses to let anyone see Crona, but he does nothing to help him himself. _

The only coherent word Crona ever spoke in his sleep was "Medusa," and Maka did not know who that could be. But by the faint, haunted way the name ghosted his lips, haggard with trauma, she guessed this person was the core of the boy's issues…but her heart kept her from asking him. Those memories must be like worms, burrowed way below in grave and dead skin, grown fat on terror; things that wriggled and moved with blind, pointless intent, eating away still at what was already finished; buried deep, deep, deep, unseen but felt, tormenting, corroding, poisoning – so the horror only festered, never died.

No, she could not ask him such things. Not until he was ready.

The fact was that Crona had suffered too much. He was a victim, pale and wispy and shacked in past tortures. How could she ask him to heave up the mantle of an impossible crusade? Such a heavy mantle, such a weighted burden, mottled with bruises of the soul and soaked in the blood of the heart. After all he had been through already – after the screaming nightmares and the bolted white rooms and the unhinged doctor with the grinning patchwork face and the whisper of enigma, _'Medusa'_ – how could she ask that of him? This world had brutalized him, crushed him; he was delicate, exhausted with torment, and rightfully so. She needed to guard and protect him from those evils that plagued his dreams – she wanted to offer serenity, comfort, security. She wanted him to _heal. _

Which meant it would have been impossible, anyway, to ask him to be her WEAPON. Even if he was one.

_Not that the pianist is much better. _

Her cut finger fumbled in fury over a shard of flowerpot, accidentally slicing deeper.

The very thought of those lofty RED eyes, that bizarre shark smirk, the resounding surety in his voice clawed at her core. And what _was_ it that tore through her? Was it the disappointment, sticky and sludge-like, a lowly feeling, sinking into her limbs? That weighed like a torpor on her body? Or was it the acid-sharp anger that consumed her, that snapped over her heart and lungs like the jaws of a viper – cracking her in two? For certainly, the sting of those fangs burnt deep, spreading a venom through her soul, a hot ember catching fire and roaring painful in her torso. The two emotions battled within her, fought for dominance in her slender form; they threatened to overwhelm her, drown her, drag her into muddled black depths; they left her blind and deaf and mute with the sheer negative impact of it.

At least she had kept her pride. That was her sole comfort.

At least she had not pleaded with him to reconsider, begged him. _Never. _

Maka had no use for an apathetic partner. And Soul, the mysterious musician with the slowly playing fingers and wry smiles, was nothing but apathy. So different from Crona, who wore emotions raw on his sleeve. The pianist threw a bland gaze toward the dead beneath his feet, ignored the harrowed stares of stone angels over their tombs; he walked thoughtlessly through streets of corrosion, not joyful but not sad, avoiding the desecration of life that warred and raged and spat and growled at his sides. The world was all grinning skulls and dying murderers and blood on the sidewalk. And he was having none of it. He'd sidestep the bodies and move forward, his gait straight, his eyes ahead, and it'd all be unseen, unheard, unfelt. She saw that now. He honestly did not care. There was nothing inside of him. Nothing, nothing, _nothing. _Only emptiness, indifference, hopelessness. Just watch the bodies roast and walk away. That was all.

Was he a BLOODSTONE? She certainly thought so or she would not have asked for his partnership. But the situation was complex, distorted. The way he pulled her aside that evening in the bar, hissing in her ear its pointlessness; it was both an act of kindness and cruelty. He could have thought he was saving her or he could have simply marveled in the deliciousness that was watching her watch a murder she tried to prevent.

But his behavior in the graveyard seemed to coincide with the kindness theory. She was certain, absolutely certain he called out to her when she pretended to scrutinize that angel sculpture. That he tried to warn her. She noticed his figure crouched by the grave, a tuft of white hair over RED eyes – saw it only in peripheral vision, but he jumped when the thug behind her pulled out the knife. Why? He cared nothing for this world, sighed at it with a mixture of apathy and tasteless scorn. So why did he try to help her? He must have witnessed thousands of muggings. What made him act out _now? _

She assumed, stupidly, that it was because he was like her. A natural impulse, a trigger to help, to defend someone in need. She should have known better. She should have remembered his thorny words, the languid way his fingers fell over piano keys as some nondescript victim shrieked and died at some stranger's hand. His eyes watched the smoke and the blood in the bar that night and nothing else. He had not reveled in the murder, but he did nothing to stop it. Told her there was no point. She remembered that, remembered the viselike grip on her arm, so unfitting with his indifferent drawl, saying she'd die the death of an unrecognized martyr, arguing that the victim was probably guilty himself. Rationalizing inaction. Pretending doing nothing could somehow benefit this world, cracked and bleeding.

Why hadn't she remembered those things?

_Because he's a WEAPON. _

Yes. That must have been it. The knowledge rushed over her like a blizzard: _the pianist was a WEAPON! _And he wasn't using his abilities to slaughter people, like the THOMSPON SISTERS, like so many others. In fact, he tried to prevent her murder on two occasions. All their petty squabbles diminished with that truth; all their sharp hisses and prickly comebacks and needlelike stares collapsed to ashes when she saw the SCYTHE BLADE and the future it meant. She thought she saw destiny in her reflection, the smudged shape of a girl and pigtails on the RED-black sheen of the BLADE. She saw a fate that was steep and rutted with doubt, a road littered with potholes and pain, a rickety path that swung precariously on threadlike hopes – but she saw them in that future, a cohesive unit shouldered against the difficulties, a single force, fighting. And the faint glimmer of something else far ahead, a clean light at the end of a muddy existence, something pristine and pure. _A world where Crona could smile again._ So far away, but its vaguest suggestion melted like sugar on her tongue. Faraway, inexistent, but its mere possibility melted like sugar on her tongue, passed through her skin and tissue and blood and veins and surged into her heart, an endless swell of euphoria.

She needed a WEAPON for that future to be possible.

This boy could have been that WEAPON.

After combing dilapidated streets for nearly a month, searching for what Dr. Stein deemed an impossibility, she found him. Oh, she knew they were not a perfect match. In fact, if circumstances were different, if DWMA still reared high and strong, they would probably be deemed ill-suited for one another. They bickered so much, their views varied too widely. But Maka did not have that luxury. She could not afford to be picky. They were both BLOODSTONES and she was a MEISTER and he was a WEAPON. She would make due; anything was better than _this – _the filthy rag of days and nights she was forced to call life. The fact that she found a WEAPON not spattered in blood was a miracle in itself.

And he was a _SCYTHE._

A ripple of emotion ran through her. She remembered things, things she kept locked up inside her. Mama. Glossy blonde hair and profound eyes. Perfect. Without a stitch of makeup, perfect, perfect. Maka did not realize how tightly she was gripping the shard in her hand, did not notice the little rivulets of blood running hot down her fingers. Oh, she remembered. She remembered so well. Clear as ice. How could she forget? How could she forget _that? _Never, never. A memory folded cold in love and bruises. Maka shivered. Mama the SCYTHE MEISTER. She moved like she was dancing. She moved with the precision of tigers and wolves, dangerous. Beautiful. Lethal. Perfect, perfect. How could she forget that? The only time she ever saw her wield a SCYTHE. The nausea clotted in Maka's throat, gobs of admiration and horror. _The only time she ever saw her wield a SCYTHE._

Horror. Because she remembered other things too.

A dank place, a groaning darkness, things rustling on chains. She remembered the clamminess, the corroded metal. The taste of spoiled meat on each breath. Spoiled meat. The things rustling on chains. Flies, buzzing. She heard them in her ear, she remembered them. Tiny itchy feet kissing at her pale cheeks, the sores on her wrists, drowning in the gore that ran from her wounds. Oh, oh, she remembered; she didn't want to. She wanted to forget. How could she forget? No, she didn't. She wouldn't forget. Never, never. She still saw it. A bright little room lined with pictures. All smiling faces, blonde hair. A ribbon, sleek and shiny and black, half-curled. Tacked to the wall. Her hair ribbon. Mama gave it to her. And her hair, tangled in the ribbon, an angel-thread strand. Blonde. And then that dank place again, spoiled meat, things rustling from chains, flies drowning in blood and pus. Infection, possibly. Shackles and rotted things around her. Crawling on hands and feet, get away, get away. Pathetic. No getting away. No escape. No one would come. Her ribbon, her hair. A room full of pictures, girls' faces. Smiles. The things rustling in the dark, hanging on chains. Flies. And no escape. None. Can't get away. And then Mama.

Mama's expression, cloudy and dark, weeks later. Holding her hand.

"Over," Mama's lips, speaking. "It's over now. Over."

And then a door shutting and the silence and the chill of early morning and Mama's _gone, gone, gone._

Maka opened her eyes, breathing hard. She did not remember shutting them, but here she was crouched over a pitiful heap of soil and dead flowers, eyelids knitted in consternation. Her white hands still clenched that jagged bit of flowerpot, and only now did she feel its sting, the hot trickle of blood on her palm. Her heart was jumping around in her chest, like a fish flopping on dry land, gasping for life; her skin felt taut and slick and cold in its layer of sweat. Her clothes clung to her. The room swam before her blurred vision, flickering at corners, a dripping sea of disoriented colors, disconcerting. Maka drew a breath and it was shallow, barely touched her lungs.

Then she stood up.

She had not thought about THOSE DAYS for a long while now. She had locked it all away, the dank place and the drowning flies and the things rustling on chains; she had sealed them inside an unbreakable fortress in her mind, dominated them, obliterated them. Or so she tried. She knew sometimes they crept through indiscernible cracks in her mental fortifications, slunk out like the cruel and disgusting bits of slime they were, stealing over her in tendrils of vague dread, drugging her dreams in fogs of horror. But she would never let them win. Oh no, never, never. She could never entirely forget, but she would never let them win. She would swallow the memory whole and let its poison become a part of her, let its venom pump its way into her veins, and in that she act she would vaccinate herself. In consuming THOSE DAYS, she would overcome them. She would use their own despicableness, their own filth, their own darkness and their own terrors to destroy them.

She would remember and she would fight because of them.

_Never forget. _

But Maka was angry with herself, a coppery flavor on her tongue. She hated the moistness of her palms and the foreign racing of her heart. They reminded her of that time after THOSE DAYS, reminded her of a smudged mirror in the bathroom and a girl's vacant expression looking back her in the glass, frail and weak and so skinny that her collarbone jutted out against papery skin. The pathetic shambles of a girl, chapped lips, screaming in the dark, a feeble creature that Mama needed to help dress and tuck into bed. So vulnerable, so soft. The reason Papa treated her like she was made of glass. The reason Mama –

Maka despised that girl.

_Forget about it. It's not important. Maybe its better the pianist was an idiot. Maybe…maybe you aren't meant to use a SCYTHE. _

For a moment, she thought she would slip into an inescapable void of disappointments, but she reeled herself back just in time.

_Stop feeling sorry for yourself. There are so many people that need help in this world…you can't afford to feel sorry for yourself. _

Her lips tightened and her mind went steely, resilient.

_I _will_ find a WEAPON. No matter what. _

And it was that thought that coerced the wailing horrors of THOSE DAYS back into the fortress in her mind.

* * *

Maka was sick when Mama left them.

Wrapped in blankets, she heard the door slam.

* * *

Maka didn't know how the valley of flowers got there, but the moment she saw them, she knew she must bring Crona there.

She had taken a detour from her usual nighttime rambles, choosing a different avenue to reach Dr. Stein's ASYLUM. The reason for this was evident. On her way home yesterday, finally convinced Crona was well enough for her to depart, her paths accidentally collided with Soul. And she was determined to never again have to suffer laying eyes on that pugnacious razor-sharp grin again. So today she slipped out of the house at a very early in the morning – in fact, shadows of night still clouded the sky – and took to wandering about Hook Cemetery. The INSANE ASYLUM, eerily enough, was situated quite close to it; she was certain more than one path through the graves led to the home of the deranged. She just needed to find one.

The graveyard was a labyrinth of crosses and angels and mossy tombstones. Maka pushed her way through rusted hooks and decapitated heads, listening to the creaky songs they jangled in the wind. There were so many dead trees here, gnarled structures above the sleeping bodies, leafless, naked. She often wondered about them when she was little. Sure, they appeared ancient and malnourished, bowled over in draught, but still they existed. How did they subsist at all in this cracked desert city? And the eventual forest they straggled into – the dark brooding clusters of vegetation that huddled around the INSANE ASYLUM – how did that ever come to grow in the desolate, sandy ruins of Death City?

Back when she was small and unknowing, before Papa's treacheries surfaced, Maka would ask him questions like that. They were as commonplace as asking why the sky was blue, why the sun started panting in the evening, why the moon grinned. Papa always called her a very thoughtful child. Maka would blush at that or tug on her pigtails or close her fingers tightly around his larger hand. The memory made her more than a little nauseous.

But his retort was always the same. That same smile she now filed away as deceit would gloss his lips, and he would tilt his head in a wistful sort of way, and look into some faraway spot in the sky, and say, "Lord Death had a way of making many impossible things happen, Maka."

_So then why is he dead now? _

The thought nipped at her like thorny teeth. If Lord Death was powerful enough to rear forests from barren dunes – if he could make the possible blossom from the impossible – if he truly governed the surreal straits of life and death and their tenuous limbos – then _why _did he die so easily? So quickly – so fast? Why did he die _at all? _What could have possibly taken such a titanic figure down? Death was all-consuming, eternal, inescapable; every life that ever opened its eyes to this world would one day die. How did you fight what was inevitable? – Omnipresent? – Everywhere? How did you fight Death?

_And how is it that Death can die? _

She didn't know. Her mind wheeled frustratingly around the paradox, an infinite circle, the end and the beginning, the beginning and the end; the same. Cause and effect, identical. What causes life to cease had its own life taken from it. But how did Death have life to begin with? Her brain ached under impossible facts that were, apparently, possible. That Death has life. That it can lose it. That the world can die because Death is no longer in it. And how exactly was that possible? How was it that people died when Death was ousted? What does it mean? _What does it mean? _

Who is it that can murder Death?

They called it the RED ANGEL, the fragments of adults that still remembered the DEATH OF DEATH. They named it, whispered of it, feared it, concocted strange theories and macabre stories, but they did not know what it was. A RED light. A searing crimson brilliance, a bloodied brightness, enfolding the city in its lurid kiss, cursing the earth to yield ashy crops, damning homes to crumble to dust, poisoning hearts so that lovers became victims and parents hangmen. Except the BLOODSTONES, of course. They have remained in the desolation. They have been untouched – or perhaps suffer the worst blight of all. They still feel. They still see. They are alone. And around them the world collapses in a tumult of blood and shrieks and murder and ashes and the fragile glass of forgotten dreams. The RED ANGEL. The RED ANGEL did it all.

_What is the RED ANGEL? _

No one knew, no one knew.

But Maka imagined something very old and very still and very patient. Something that did not need to breathe or blink or stir, but waited quietly, quietly, hidden in some forgotten vault where shadows skittered and shrieked like wild animals, and there it waited, waited, and would continue to wait, something as ancient as the sun, watching with a sleepy eye that never slept.

Childishness. Maka realized how silly these musings were, eerie and familiar and ludicrous as the belief that a monster lurks under your bed. But no matter how hard she tried to replace them with a more logical hypothesis, the idea just latched deeper into her mind. Perhaps it was because she heard gory tales of the RED ANGEL so early in life; her little girl's mind automatically conjured darkness and mystery and sleepless eyes. Now it seemed to radiate from her subconscious, the sort of inborn natural wariness every human being felt for something unknown and unremembered.

_And then there's Lord Death's son… _

Dead. She tried to imagine him, a miniature replica of the vastness and mystery and universal power that was his father. The task was impossible. How did you visualize the heir of Enigma? Dead, dead, dead. In the end, what he looked like had not mattered. The meaningfulness of his identity shriveled to dust and blood. In fact, his name – whatever it was – probably became his death warrant. She could not see his face, but she thought his body must have been small, and frail despite his profound lineage, a delicate little figure crushed and mutilated by riotous crowds on the night his father fell. Gone, gone. Trampled into dirt, torn skin, snapped bones. A needle of ice pierced Maka's soul at the thought. So cold. She only heard Papa speak of him twice. Once a few weeks ago, when he hissed his demise in the face of her dreams, something to dissipate hopes; and the other long ago, while she crouched unbidden by her bedroom door, shivering in her blankets, listening to Papa's voice spiral up the staircase: "Yes – he's dead, Kami! Lord Death's son is dead! I saw it – _I saw him die."_

Other than that, he never spoke of him. Whenever she asked about Lord Death's son, he grew grave and silent and gray as a ghost, sat still as a statute in a graveyard.

_Why am I thinking about this? _

She needed to focus on the present, not the past. She could not save a deceased godling, but she could protect those who still lived. Like Crona.

Her feet wandered along with her thoughts. She followed tiny crooked paths she never traveled before, traveled through areas more densely populated with trees. The little walkways she moved along grew threadbare and shanty, petering out into lumpy grasslands dotted with graves. The tombstones themselves were even shabbier and mossier than the ones in the graveyard's central area – which was pretty derelict – and so ancient that the names chiseled into stone were faded beyond recognition. Maka stared out among the crumbling hunks of rock, unafraid, but as she strode further into the desolation, a strangeness crept over her.

This place was still. And old. The grotesque trees knotted their roots deep into the soil, but the gnarled branches did not so much as twitch in the early air. Wind was nonexistent. Sparse grass poked feebly from the ground, looking like flimsy, beaten brown fingers, wilted in defeat. The dirt itself was black and loose beneath her feet; her footfalls made it stir unnaturally; it floated about her ankles and fell as soft and quiet as dust as she passed. Nothing moved, nothing sounded, nothing breathed. Listen. She felt the place listened to her movements, to the suddenly uncouth sound of her mouth sucking in air.

Up ahead, through a gap in twisted branches, she saw the INSANE ASYLUM.

_Almost there. _

But she needed to cut through a crush of dead trees to get there. From her vantage point, she could only catch the morbid outline of the building, long and stony and snakelike on its forested hill. Her immediate surroundings were still unfamiliar. She had no idea what lay ahead of her in that particularly thick huddle of trees; what might be waiting on the other side.

Standing straight, pinching the blade hidden beneath her skirt, Maka walked into a maze of rotted wood.

And what was when she saw her.

All breath stole from her lips.

"…Mama?"

Yes. There, standing amid the dreary, lichen-yellowed trunks, shrouded in the dripping chaos of twig and root and branch, was her mother. Maka could recognize her anywhere – Mama, Mama – tall and limber and confident, with that glorious fountain of hair that flooded like sunlight to her shoulders. Her eyes looked ghostly in the gloom, a haunted shade of green flecked with certain gold, a luminous and enchanting gaze lovelier than Maka's could ever hold. The shape of the trees stooped and crouched about her like bent old beggars, bowled by her beauty and significance; her skin was radiant and pristine and cream-colored, its very presence seemingly scouring the filth of this grove.

Maka could not believe she was here. Some small part of her, the logical bit of her brain that had not shut down, warned her of its impossibility – but her senses and excitement overrode it, screaming otherwise. How could it not be true? There stood her mother, same as always; in fact, more beautiful than always, mythical and phantasmal as a dream turned reality, and she stood here waiting for her daughter, in this graveyard orchard. Mama, Mama. So solid, so clear, _so_ _here_. And Maka wanted her to be here – oh, so very badly did she want it.

Perhaps Mama had finally decided to forgive her.

But as she ran the grove seemed to lengthen. She was never near enough. Her heart bounded in her chest and her mind swam in sheer wonder, then sheer desperation, as she fought to reach the elusive parent. Her nerves jangled against her skin, cold. Why couldn't she reach her? Since when had this orchard been so long? She raced by and a twig lashed across her cheek, like the scratchy caress of a snake's tail. The air was thick with the taste of cobwebs. Why was so she so far away? Why would she not come closer? Maka's breath stung in her chest, her voice gasped in her throat. Why didn't Mama call out to her? Why did she stay blind to her? "Mama! Mama!" she yelled into the shadowy air and the shadows threw the words back at her in echoes, high and panicked:_ "Mama! Mama!" _Why was Maka not there yet? Or – rather – why was Mama not here yet? Why wasn't she here? _Why was she always not here? Here? Here? _

Where was she?

_Mama…! _

And suddenly Mama was gone.

And Maka was tumbling over a dented fence, wrought-iron, its gate hanging lopsided.

And she fell into a valley of white flowers.

* * *

"…Crona. _Crona!" _

She leaned over on the tree branch, hearing the whispers and hisses of the night.

"Crona? Are you there?"

Sneaking into the INSANE ASLYUM was a balancing act. The stout pines ringed the entire structure and Crona's chambers were conveniently located by a window. Almost too conveniently. Maka often wondered if there was some more insidious reason behind this arrangement, something darker than coincidence. After all, the location seemed a little too helpful and Dr. Stein seemed a little too intelligent.

When Maka first snuck onto the premises, she was guarded and tight-limbed. Now, however, after weeks upon weeks of slipping through the opened glass, she was slightly more relaxed.

Besides, the smell of the flowers still swirled around her brain.

"_Crona…! _Are you here?"

She scooted carefully over the rough bark, the wooden limb stretched out so far its needles nearly brushed the colorless windowsill. She edged closer, milky petals fluttering from her hair. A valley of flowers in the middle of a graveyard. Soft as a moonlit shaft glowing through a dim mist; glorious as a flock of silver-feathered doves; beautiful as spun-crystal. Each petal silken and snowy and smooth, and they seemed to tinkle in the indigo winds of dusk, laughing lilies and murmuring marigolds. No grays dampened their shine; the brown creep of wilting did not steal over the robust emerald of their leaves; the cold kiss of decay melted to nothingness against the brilliant white petals.

_These flowers…aren't affected by this world. _

Growth. Life. Hope.

_I have to show Crona. _

Even though something tapped at the back of her brain. A memory, stuffed with cobwebs. A new memory, shrouded in forgetfulness, a poppy-scented sleepiness. Hadn't – hadn't she been chasing someone? Hadn't she? Through a damp orchard full of wiry old trees that groped at her arms and legs with knurled fingers. Someone important, someone who haunted her, a brilliant ghost that whirled like fire through her memories – burned bright in a somber mind; and hadn't she run desperately toward this person? Through an endless orchard, into a field of undying flowers. Hadn't this person meant everything? Was this enigmatic runaway not her lifeblood? A bearer of secrets – secrets she must hear to survive? Who was it? Who was it?

_I don't remember…_ Maka's chest was crushed in abrupt uneasiness, but the vision of flowers eddied through her mind like an enchanted mist and the anxiety ebbed away. _It's obviously not important…I've just discovered something amazing – _Blooms that did not wilt! Flora that did not die! Petals as white and unblemished as a cloud in heaven! – _I don't know how it's possible, but somehow these flowers are resisting the RED ANGEL's influence, the same way BLOODSTONES do. They aren't like my irises. They grow in defiance of this world. _

Her heart thudded like a holy drum in her ears.

_If I study them, maybe I can discover…what it is in them that combat the RED ANGEL. Maybe this is my first real step toward saving this world. _

And she needed to show him. Her fingers touched the glass of the sealed window. It felt cold.

"Crona?"

Finally there came the sound of scraping stone and metal as the window groaned open.

It was technically supposed to be locked at all times, but in some previous altercation with Ragnarok (which translated into Crona screaming and wriggling beneath the bullying hands of his Siamese twin), the pink-haired boy fell back against the wall and the DEMON SWORD subsequently slammed into the casements, significantly loosening them. These sorts of crashes and thuds and shrieks must have been common from Crona's cells because no one bothered to check on the commotion. The window remained broken. It took very little effort to shove the rickety glass upward on Maka's first visit. Now it gave away easily, as if in eagerness for her entrance.

Convenient, but it worried her. She couldn't suppress that creeping feeling that the window had not been overlooked. Dr. Stein did not seem like a careless man. She thought his mind a dark trap, a crooked, shadowy labyrinth of complexity and ingenuity and criminality. Wouldn't he check Crona's chambers frequently to make sure they were properly barricaded? He appeared so adamant on keeping the boy as his prisoner.

But the flowers pressed their sweet perfume over her thoughts and she did not think of this tonight.

Crona stood inside the room, looking twitchier than usual.

"Crona –" Maka slid easily into the chambers and took up the boy's hands with a delicate squeeze, "I need to show you something; something amazing –"

"M – Maka," Crona breathed, and it was a desperate word that toppled from stricken lips.

She stopped abruptly, leaning in to examine his face. His skin, always so pale, was now drowned in pallor of unspeakable gray. Dark circles bruised sickly, shell-shocked eyes of glacier blue; eyes that looked ahead and saw nothing as they stared; eyes that blinked and blinded themselves into a depthless vacancy. His cheeks seemed somehow tauter than usual and his body visibly shivered.

Maka's throat constricted. "What happened?"

The boy gasped and swallowed and stammered out his words. His pale eyes flew from side to side like wild birds trapped in a cage.

"Uh – uh – _huh – _uh – _n-nothing, M – Maka…" _He pulled back from her and tipped on stilt-skinny legs, nearly falling over, "I'm – uh – I'm – o-o-okay," the starved hands wrung themselves and the face a bloodless mask of trauma, "I'm – I'm –"

He began wiping his thin shaken hands over the crumpled white of his hospital gown.

Maka felt like a cobra wrapped itself around her torso, crushing the life out of her.

"Crona, please," his fear stabbed at her, reducing a valley of flowers to a sea of dust, "You can tell me what happened. You know I only want to help you," her voice was urgent, edged in stone, "Did the doctor find out about us? Did he hurt you?" This last inquiry dropped to a whisper, a bitter wraith of a question strangled by pain and worry and anger.

Crona dragged his head nervously from side to side. _No. _

She took his shoulders a little more tightly than she meant to, her nerves needling into her skin like a physical anguish, "Then tell me. Please, Crona. You can tell me."

A wet glimmer slid smoothly over the boy's light-colored lashes, a vulnerable sheen of tears; they tumbled down his cheeks in a voiceless cascade. His knees went slack and Crona plummeted, all gauntness and trauma and papery hospital gowns, nothing but shivers on a cold floor. Maka dropped with him, still holding his shoulders.

"Oh Crona…" she traced a finger over the indent on his thin face, catching tears, "Don't cry."

"W – Why are – are you – so – so _nice _to me?"

The wet eyes wouldn't look at her. They spotted the floorboards with dark smudges.

Maka surveyed him calmly, "Because you're my best friend, Crona," she moved closer and embraced him, feeling the sharpness of his ribs against her body, "You're my very best friend."

He fell to shambles in her arms, gasping and shuddering. She felt incredibly useless, unable to do more than hold him and whisper downy words that collapsed to nothingness before they reached him. She had no idea what upset him so much; the secret was locked away inside him, a gnawing demon that devoured him from the inside out.

Ragnarok was oddly quiet.

She wasn't complaining.

"I – I don't deserve it," his response muffled by her shoulder, "I d – don't…I'm…I'm not…like…you…"

That stung her, a fang to her heart. Its poison spread throughout her entire body, burning at her fingertips, filling her mouth with the taste of ash.

"That's not true."

She cradled his face gently in her hands, stroking away a webwork of tears. So innocent, so broken. She touched her lips to his bloodless cheek, wanting to relay some kind of comfort to him, convince him of his worth, his preciousness. But at that exact moment, something in the adjacent chamber shrieked and gurgled a wet and repulsive death – and Crona, always so nervous, always so quick to find terror in the light – jerked his head impulsively toward the sound. His gray lips brushed faintly over hers, a ghost of a collision; an echo of a person very near and very faraway all at the same time.

She knelt there for a moment, frozen in his petrified stare.

Then Maka pulled herself away swiftly and Crona went reeling, throwing himself backwards; he slammed against the floorboards in a crumpled heap, a shivering thing of pink and white and pale-pale eyes, his mouth a pathetic writhing of apologies – a positive mantra of barely coherent remorse –

"I'm sorry – I'm _so_ sorry! I didn't mean it! I'll _never _do it again, I promise I won't! I'm sorry! Please, I won't – I didn't mean to –!"

"Crona –!" And suddenly she was laughing, because this situation was so light and fragile and ridiculous in a world made of sin, and the boy before her cowered as though he attempted murder, "It's not a big deal. It was just an accident…I'm not mad at you."

She enveloped his shaking hands in hers.

"Come on. I want to show you something."

The valley of flowers lay glittering behind its dented iron fence.

Maka worried she would not find it in time, but her footsteps seemed to lead her to the place without any mental recollection. As though coming here was natural, as though the garden was a chorus of whispers guiding her to their ethereal beauty.

Crona clutched to her. As she coaxed him out the window and down the pine tree with painstaking slowness, she wondered if he ever saw the outside world before; if he had grown up knowing only four peeling white walls and a maze of dripping, dilapidated corridors that led to bolted doors and screeching rats and poor suffering things too bruised and mutilated to be called human. Perhaps that had been his whole universe, his entire existence – now she took his hand and opened a passage to an entire new reality, a vast vortex of strange buildings and stranger inhabitants, crumbling graveyards rife with hidden horrors, sprawling forests chittering with unseen threats and destitute sands that settled still and forbidding over underground murders.

Maka realized Death City teemed with dangers, but she also knew that holing Crona up in a basic prison would not help him. He would simply grow sickly, vulnerable and wasted as he breathed in air that had been breathed a dozen times before, as he stared at nothing but plaster and sealed windows. She wanted him to realize he could step outside and drink the fresh air and grow stronger from it. That he could do more than just survive – that he could_ live. _

And she would protect him.

"Come on, Crona. There's nothing to be scared of. Isn't it beautiful?"

She squeezed his fingers delicately and tugged him through the ramshackle fence into a sea of flora. Their feet sunk ankle-deep in a froth of leaves and petals, bountiful white shapes that bobbed and whispered as they moved. The soil smelled sweet and fresh, an unfamiliar scent in this place; it mingled with the heady perfume of lilies and hibiscuses and regal magnolias – all white, white, white – the color of an angel's heart, or a cloud untainted by smog, or the hue of heaven – and their fragrance swirled and eddied through her brain like a dream. Like an intravenous of faery-dust, the sight and smell of the valley stole through her veins and stirred her blood, made it light, airy, ethereal. Like an enchanted mist, the pale faces of carnations and tulips shrouded her senses with a surreal elation, feeling as silvery as moonlight. Like a murmur; like a memory; like magic – like – _like – _

Like nothing else existed but for this garden and these flowers and the boy who stood beside her.

"O – oh," Crona fell among pale blossoms and nearly smiled at the unblemished beauty, "L – look, Maka. A flower," as though it were the most uncommon thing in the world, as though he just happened to stumble suddenly and innocently upon it. This sole flower, within a tumultuous ocean of blossoms; as if this was the only one in existence.

She watched as his gray fingers picked it timidly and offered it to her. Its little ruffled petals stirred like the wings of a butterfly in the breeze.

Why was it that beautiful moments always felt so sad?

Maka spoke past the lump in her throat, "It's lovely, Crona."

But the words came out in a faint breath and the wind snatched them away.

Instead she reached out wordlessly for both him and the flower. She wanted to tell him how special this was. Not the little gift of white petals, though certainly it was sweet, and pure, and imbued with hopeful promise, but even its profound metaphor dulled in comparison to the boy who held it. This frail boy, who stood shaking in the wind like the beaten stalk of some dead plant; this precious boy, who stood here with her in an unreal garden in the rubble of a graveyard; this tired boy, who sat by windows and greeted her every night with a malnourished smile, his scars forgotten; this mystery boy, whose hands she now took, weak and thin and cold between her fingers; this boy who looked at her across a white valley that shone like a thousand tiny moons tethered to the earth. This boy. Crona. Her friend, her truest friend. Here With her. Now. This place.

How did she describe something like that?

How did she say it – those feelings?

And what was it she felt?

"Crona…it really means…so much to me –"

But there was a snap and a rustle and then Crona was screaming.

"_Crona!" _

Too late – she should have seen it coming. Ragnarok, here to ruin the moment. Crona writhed as the thing shuddered against his spine, the flower falling between them like a broken promise. His fingers knitted into the pink-purple of his hair; his back warped and cracked disturbingly, and the DEMON SWORD emerged in a spatter of black cloth and dark tissue, its blank eyes roving. She expected it to turn those bulging X-irises on her immediately, spit some crude comment, but instead it pounded meaty fists against Crona's scalp, his words a series of irritated grunts.

"What? Where the _hell _are we, Crona? What are we doing outside again? Don't tell me that crappy scientist put me to sleep again – I'll rip your eyeballs straight outta your sockets!"

What followed was typical sheer chaos.

Maka shouted, "Don't you dare!" but it crashed and drowned in Crona's more hysterical reply, "But I don't think I could see without my eyeballs! I wouldn't be able to deal with being blind!"

"_GOUBEE! _Then I'll put them in a blender and turn them into soup!"

"Shut up! You're scaring him!"

"I can't deal with cannibalism!"

"Ragnarok, no one's eating _anybody!" _

"That's what you think, _cow! _Maybe I'll make you drink your own eyeball juice, Crona!"

"No! No! Stop it! Stop it! I can't deal with that! I can't! I can't!"

And then a twig snapped again.

"Gou – bee?" Ragnarok swiveled his dark head toward the sound, hands still clutched on tufts of pinkish hair, "Did you hear that? Something's coming! Prepare yourself, dumbass."

Ragnarok slid back into Crona's spine like wet jelly. Maka's nerves tingled. The valley of flowers seemed so clean, so untouched; it must have lain undisturbed for generations. She thought it might be a sanctuary for them, someplace safe and secure and silent that no one else knew about. Obviously she was wrong. Or else her mere presence damaged the secrecy of this place, opened up its fresh beauties to the dripping spoils of this world. Her stomach knotted in anger and disappointment.

And Ragnarok's warning…_"prepare yourself." _How in the world could Crona prepare himself? She watched him in the moonlight, tall and spindly. No, no, it wasn't his fault, but Dr. Stein locked him away for far too long. He grew sickly behind white walls, breathing in dust. He was in no shape to fight.

"Crona –"

She stepped forward, about to wrap her fingers around his wrist, when it happened.

The woods vomited a brutal figure, a hulking man with his head shaved down to nubs and his arms laced with scars. He strode through the flowers with a leer, massacring a dozen white heads with each subsequent stomp, beheading fair lilies and dragging lovely dahlias into dirt coffins. His belt jangled with weapons, all knives and hammers, heavy things meant to snap bones instantly.

Maka dug her own heels into the soil, eyes trained ahead. Her mind was clear, but hyperactive, speeding in its logic and assessments. Alright, the man was much bigger than them; he could easily crush them in close contact. There was no way to get around that. But there was a benefit to being smaller. She was lighter; she could run faster; she could probably slip by him pretty easily – and she could use the trees as havens and vantage points. The branches would support her weight over his; she could escape to a nest of pine needles and branches, avoid his attacks, and perhaps launch her own from the trees – _the trees! Crona! _An electric shock jolted Maka's entire body. Oh, oh, she needed to get Crona up there _right away – _he had no weapons; he was definitely too malnourished to fight, not to mention fearful –

But what she next saw made her brain stop.

In fact, what she saw made her world – tentative as it was – collapse like a palace of cards.

Crona's eyes were bruised with shadows, but they were also vacant, once more that pearly, haunted blue. A cloud appeared besides him, a black one, floating. And he was so still, still, still; still as a thing that crawls from its grave and lies in wait without reason, a thing that looks blindly and does not breathe, but still watches, watches – a thing unnatural. His shoulders remained hunched, his left hand continued to clutch his right arm in that familiar nervous twitch, but that was not enough to mask the change. Seemingly imperceptible, the differences resounded throughout his entire being for Maka, a spider-thin crack that ran straight down his body. The face was altered, slack and tormented, but also jaded, exhausted, glazed in certain horror – a mad face framed ridiculously in mismatched lengths of pink hair. And the eyes were so hollow, unseeing. Thin and sharp as a knife in the dark. Mad, mad. Could this honestly be Crona? Was this truly – the boy who accompanied her to a valley of flowers? Now he stood as a ghoul in the graveyard, somehow changed, the haggard darkness in his expression as grim as a plague.

"Cro – na?" Maka whispered lowly, but he did not hear her.

He must not have heard her. Slowly, he lifted his hand into the eerie mist and drew forth a sword. Its blade gleamed darker than the night around it, a rich and wicked obsidian, crisscrossed with shining bands of steel; its surface was showered with spikes, cruel points that looked capable of gouging out eyeballs. The weapon looked huge, heavy – way too large for Crona's pick-skinny arm to support – but his bony gray fingers gripped the hilt easily and hefted it with strange familiarity. He flicked his wrist and the sword slashed through the night air as if it was as light as paper. His expression was bland, unchanged. Maka thought her brain was filled with cotton.

"You're here…to hurt Maka…aren't you?"

Crona's voice was different too. Hush, hush. A murmur.

The man reeled at the sight of him. It was ridiculous, the burly thug stumbling into heaves of blossoms at the wasted shell of a boy, but the mean little eyes widened in certain shock, the bristly mouth gaped.

"You…you…_I know you!" _the words escaped him like shrieking ghosts, but shriveled to a weak whisper as the man gazed ahead, "You're that – that _thing! _The – the thing from the – freak show! That…thing…_that –!" _

Maka blinked but had no time to react.

Maka blinked, but –

But Crona laughed and a shiver of needles pierced her spine. She could not link that laugh with the boy she cradled in her arms after he awoke from bad dreams. That boy was traumatized, certainly, but he was all innocence; she held him the way one would hold a baby bird, sweet, harmless, but vulnerable.

She could not link that laugh with the boy she cradled after he woke from bad dreams. That boy was traumatized, certainly, but he was all innocence; he was sweet and harmless as a baby bird, made tragic by broken wings. How could such a laugh come from those lips? The sound that escaped him now was sickly, high and soft and unhinged, the sort of giggle a guilty child emitted before snapping the neck of a wriggling animal. It bore down into her soul; that laugh – colder than a midnight frost.

She watched as Crona bent forward, his frame wiry but insidious. His hands clamped over the pointed hilt of his blade, and she caught a glimpse of his face in the moonlight – a smile screwed high at the corners of his mouth, a wired grin, crazed and manic. It was a smile to rival the moon.

"_Ha – ha!" _His eyes roved from side to side, frenetic as a rabbit, "You remember that time, huh? Have you come to throw something at me also? Like those people…and the clowns…and the ringmaster. I didn't know how to deal with that," shudder, shudder, he shook convulsively, lifting a vacant gaze to haunt the man's face, "She told me I need to learn how to deal with people better. So – I did what she told me to do," and his eyes rolled, back and forth, back and forth, and the smile bloodied his lips like a murderer's smirk, _"Hey…!_ Have you come to see…? _Do you know…?" _

The moon peered down on them, drooling RED on white flowers.

"My blood is black."

Lips protruded from the blade. Large, wet, grotesque lips, wreathed in slobber, complete with lolling tongue. The scarlet mouth opened and an unholy wail ripped from it, churning the night air into chaos, rumbling deep in the very bones of those sleepers who lay beneath graves and tombstones. The screech stabbed at Maka's eardrums and pounded into her brain like a symphony of screams, picking with sharp fingernails at flesh and skull.

The man heard it too. Through watering eyes, she saw him double over, nearly retching, crawling through flowers. She was stricken, still. The valley was a tumultuous ocean of leaves and petals, whirring and flapping and shaking with the shriek of the blade; their vines seemed to snake about her ankles and hold her back; the delicate perfume became a cloying odor, drugging her thoughts.

_Crona…Crona…Crona… _

Her mind was a bleak, dark place and she was drowning in it. What was going on? Screams consumed her. Flowers, everywhere. Where was everyone? Was that Crona? Was that the man? She saw a figure – and it _was_ Crona, all baleful blue eyes and flying pink hair – dart forward with the screaming weapon clasped between his hands. Why couldn't she see? The sounds were vibrations, deep in the earth. Heaving blossoms and cadavers. Maka pushed herself blindly toward them, the agony of screeches digging at her brain. Someone lifted a blade – who was that? Oh, oh, it was Crona, his face blank as a madman's – and what was that? What was that? The man, their enemy, on the floor, a writhing, shaking thing – his arm flung out wildly and slammed against Crona's cheek – _Crona! Crona! Was he okay? Was he alright? _

_What…what was he doing? Where was he? _

_Where was Crona? _

The sword closed its mouth.

A gash sliced across the boy's cheek, but it was a shallow mark. Numbly, numbly, she saw the black stuff clot at its corners, drip like some sort of unhealthful sludge down a jutting collarbone. And what – what was going on? What was – wasn't this a valley of flowers? Quiet, quiet, a carnation flutters like a butterfly in a boy's palm. She knows him. She knows him. And who – who was he? Who was – wasn't this a special place? A thousand sleepy heads of a thousand splendid flowers, whispering in a graveyard. Wasn't this place sacred? She saw a sword hung high in the moonlight, grasped by a gray hand. Didn't she know him? A boy, a boy. Smiles and scars. She knows him. Her eyes were blank but they were not blind as the blade rushed down and painted the flowers a different color. White, white, white, a garden of moons. A carnation in the palm of a friend.

RED

RED

RED

The butchered figure that was once a man struggled upward and Crona surveyed it blandly.

"Bloody Needle."

A series of blackish droplets rose up into spikes and lacerated what remained of the man.

He fell dead.

_Who is this person? What – what just happened? _

_What just…what just…? _

And he turned nervously, twitching slightly, clutching his sword,

"Maka? Maka, are you okay? Did he hurt you? Maka –!"

_Crona…?_

* * *

And he was running.

Pain cut into his side, the fine fabric of his pants was torn, and blood drizzled down his thigh, but still Soul ran. His breath sagged in his throat and his vision was a blur of tombstones and withered old trees, reaching out dry, twiggy hands to grasp him and hold him captive. Soil and insidious pebbles shrilled seeming laugher as he stumbled and nearly collapsed over them, feet aching in the prison of his shoes. His weak leg trembled beneath his weight; a hissing roar filled his eardrums; his body was cold and hot, slick with sweat. His mind was a jumbled confusion of panic and escape and fear, shooting out images that juddered through his veins and seared at his nerves in horror. A piano, blood-mahogany. A dozen stone angels, watching him with suicidal eyes. And that man. That man with olive fingers, brushing at his hair –

_Frig – frig – frig –!_

A mantra of swearwords, but it didn't help.

He'd seen it on television and nothing could take it back.

Now, after the DEATH OF DEATH, T.V. sort of went out of style. More accurately, people started using their television sets in different ways – mainly, setting them on fire, throwing them through windows or crushing helpless victims beneath the bulkier ones. A lot were stolen, dismembered or sold on the BLACK MARKET. The innards of a T.V. were usually more coveted than an intact set; all those wires and metal stuff and fancy little bits – if reworked properly they could make excellent torture devices. But no one really had much desire to sit down and watch something on a television screen, and besides, hardly anyone had the energy or resources to air anything anyway. T.V. was just another status symbol for the rich and the powerful, a vintage delight, a thing of connoisseur tastes.

But every once in a while a sicko liked to use one to get some message out.

Well, Noah was certainly one of those sickos.

_Their coming…their coming… their coming… _

About noon today a dusty screen dropped down from the moldered candles of DWMA. Soul was walking back to his hotel, the weak morning light itching at his tired eyes. There was quite a bit of commotion about the gigantic screen, dully reflecting the shambles of the city. Apparently, strange and silent workers scurried about the abandoned school all night, disturbing dust and cobwebs as they labored to set it up. No one knew why. No one dared ask. By now, a tentative crowd crept toward the scene, murmuring curiosities, but still no one could scratch the meaning behind it.

Soul decided to keep walking. What was the point, really? It was probably just another atrocity.

And it was. But it caught his attention anyway.

"I'm watching you."

The voice was a ghost. It was something intangible, malignant, an invisible monster that stalked and possessed him, gripped talon-like fingers into his heart. It was a noose around his neck, twisting knots against his breathing; it was ice-cold shackles, chaining his feet to the ground; it was like breath tickling at the nape of your neck, insidious, insidious – it was like an unwelcome caress.

"I'm watching you…and you're all mine."

Soul turned and found himself staring into the magnified gaze of a COLLECTOR.

Noah's face flickered into life on the screen, hanging between huge mossy candles, surveying the crowds with a look that was both superior and hungry. His eyes were chilled – dark frozen pits – but beneath their ice a fire glowed, an intent, clawing, avid greed, the type that violates the soul.

Soul remembered how his throat tightened. Not cool.

"…someone has stolen my SHINIGAMI," Noah seemed to roll the words around his tongue before he offered them to his audience, as though they were sweet wine, "And I intend on getting it back," and the fire engulfed the coldness of his eyes, a lecherous gaze that was somehow hollow, hollow, hollow, "I want all of Death City to know – the SHINIGAMI is a COLLECTOR'S ITEM and it belongs to me," a pause glossed in breathlessness and untold horrors, "_No one else is allowed to touch it,"_ Noah usually whispered soft threats, but these words grated on his silken throat, furious and almost guttural; they rang out loud from hidden speakers, disturbing indignant ravens from their perches, rocking the unsteady foundations of a crumbling city, "…and I'm tired of being tampered with. Nothing I truly desire escapes my notice. Anything that feels it has escaped me…you are wrong. If you have not been recollected, I don't find you valuable enough to waste money searching for."

Soul thought those eyes found him, haunted him.

"But I will _not_ have my most treasured possession pilfered. So, I am here to make an offer," and his lips spilled over into a smile, wet and slick and dripping with secret intentions, "Bring me the SHINIGAMI. Whoever brings it will live. Everyone else will die. The bloodshed will not cease until the precious thing is in my hands once more," and the eyes rolled, midnight stones, seeming to catch Soul's gaze in the crowd, seeming to know he watched, seeming to acknowledge his presence, even if Noah truly sat miles away in his plush manor, "Anyone willing to…appease my anger may bring me a smaller trinket…something I might have lost, something that valuable enough to search for myself. It might abate your demise – for a while," and that smile was still dripping when he murmured the last words –

"Let the hunt begin."

That was when he unleashed a crew of monsters onto his audience.

It was surprising – how fast you could be recognized. The screen dimmed to blackness and almost instantly there was a hand squeezing the back of his neck, a rugged grunt in his ear,

"_The pianist! The pianist! Bound to save my life –!" _

Soul distinctly remembered the way those craggy nails felt, digging into his flesh; he could still clearly recall the stink of the man's breath killing his nostrils. And then the DEMON's voice, hooting its laughter in his ear,

_/Haha! Well, Soul – it looks like you stuck out a little too much! So much for being cool, eh?/ _

Right. Well, he supposed being a white-haired, RED-eyed, shark-toothed pianist in an apocalyptic city that no longer remembered music was bound to get him noticed. And it wasn't like anyone in this world knew the meaning of altruism; in the best of times people slaughtered and stole for their benefit; in a moment of crisis, an individual would stoop to all forms of lowliness to save his or her skin.

The afternoon was a blur of blood and limbs. He escaped from his first attacker easily enough – the man was a drunk and a fool, loud-mouthed; he screamed the second Soul's arm transformed into a SCYTHE BLADE and accidentally loosened his grip. All it took was a hard jive to the gut with his elbow and Soul was off, running pell-mell through the streets, crashing headlong into a chaos of bodies, slicing blindly with his SCYTHE, ducking past recognizing eyes and beating away groping hands.

His mind became a blank slate. Run, run, run. Nothing else mattered. His legs sweated beneath the plush fabric of his suit, ached as he zigzagged down crooked blocks and slammed over rubble-strewn alleys. Survival, survival. All around him, people died. He saw bizarre, disturbing creatures: huge wormlike shadows with a circle of twitching fangs, consuming a whole person with one swoop; evil little robotic gremlins that zipped by in metallic smears and cut heads clean off; some warped thing that he vaguely recalled as the Manticore, lumbering by on mismatched limbs and swinging its heavy, blood-spattered jowls, its longish teeth crammed with the guts and skin and toes of victims. Run, run, run. Don't look back. Don't pay attention. Don't notice. Don't remember. His ears were stuffed with screams. The color RED murdered his eyes. At one point a woman grabbed him; she smelled like cheap perfume and her gaze was deranged, her fingernails bloodied; she pressed a dagger to his throat.

One look into her hard, soulless face and he knew what would happen – Noah's offer was a laughing bell in his head, echoing, repeated a thousand times (like a thousand faces in a thousand picture frames) – those same words, _"It might abate your demise – for a while! For a while! For a while!" – _the woman was fumbling for something with her free hand, probably a drugged handkerchief – Soul saw things in his mind. He saw a screen between two green-furred candles, he saw smiling cinnamon-pink lips, he saw those fingers in his hair – he saw the Manticore with body-parts wedged in its teeth – _Wait, wait. Wasn't he a WEAPON? Wasn't he a SCYTHE?_

He jerked away and the dagger skimmed his neck and his SCYTHE BLADE slammed through her wrist.

The woman fell away, shrieking. Her hand lay on the floor, still.

Bile choked his throat.

_This is…this is… _RED welled up around the severed fleshy thing, like a scarlet cushion. His vision began to disintegrate into chunky bits of blackness, a veil of heat creeping up his spine. _This is not…this is really…not… _

He felt the warmth of the blood roll down his SCYTHE, his arm.

_But what is…what is…? _

Thud, thud. Something huge was coming this way. Thud, thud, thud. Something huge and he needed to run but he was trapped in his body, still and cold and overheated, and the woman was a shrilling shape on the ground, and her arm was a spurting stump, and the blood fell down like RED rain and spattered his shoes. Thud, thud, thud. He was trapped in his body. Thud, thud, thud. The woman shrieked and bled and bled and shrieked. Thud, thud, thud.

_What is…the…definition…of…'cool?'_

Soul's mouth tasted like vomit.

Thud, thud.

Then the huge something descended upon them – an image he would not recall in his waking hours, but it would scar his dreams; a single, bloodshot eye – and a dragging claw crushed the woman in half and he was running again.

Thud, thud.

He didn't remember much after that. He thought he heard someone laughing at times and sped to evade him (for the voice was definitely male), but everywhere he turned the hysterical giggles followed, right behind him, right before him, rebounding off walls and hitting him full in the face, louder, louder, louder – it was a shrieking, unhealthy sound, a mad laugh.

Eventually he shut his mouth and the laughter mysteriously stopped.

Near dusk, Soul made it to Hook Cemetery. He crouched by a tombstone and upchucked his dinner. He didn't know how he got there. His mind skipped and juddered and replayed the same reel of memories. The screen, hanging like dead black space between candles and cobwebs. Noah's face, his lips, smiling. His fingers in Soul's hair. The lost SHINIGAMI, so pretty. The woman, her dagger at his throat. Cheap perfume. The severed hand. The blood on his SCYTHE. The monster tears her to bits. Flicker, flicker. It begins again. The woman. The hand. The monster. Hold up. Wait. Why was he still thinking about this? The woman. The hand. The monster. Wait, wait. Let's think about this – The woman, the hand, the monster – _wait, wait, _

Who had been laughing?

He wanted to ask the DEMON, but there was no time.

The respite in the graveyard was brief. He was sighted again, a couple of rangy men and their pack of slavering mutts. Now he pushed into a grove of trees and ignored how the old branches grabbed fistfuls of his suit and scraped at his cheeks. Survive, survive. It was all that mattered. The woman, the hand, the monster. The laughter. The DEMON. Flicker, flicker, the same reel of memories, winding like tangled footage through his mind, senseless, meaningless. A dead hand on the floor. The laughter. _Wait, wait. _Hold up, now –

He collapsed into a garden of flowers.

All sounds dimmed.

Soul half-rose shakily and his vision was assaulted by a bizarre sight.

That girl, Maka. Her face was very white, but she looked unharmed. Her hair curled honey-colored around her face, soft and pure in the moonlight. But her eyes were stricken, disturbed; they shone an unforgettable green in the thickened nighttime air. And then someone else was there; some tall pink-haired thing, all covered in blood.

_Am I – going crazy? _

Maybe he was. Hell, he'd almost welcome it at this point.

The scent of lilies was like a whole funeral parlor rammed up his nose. He choked.

"S – _Soul? _What are _you _doing here? How did you find this place?" Then those vivid eyes batted, took in his entire appearance, "What – happened to you?" He felt her kneel besides him, the flowers sighing at the motion; he smelled lavender and lemongrass. "You're hurt."

"Nice of you to – notice," he grunted sarcastically, but hell was not over.

There was a scream and the sound of writhing, a thud of bodies hitting bodies. Soul forced his blurred eyes up in time to see a shadowy figure engulf the pink-haired thing, press a cloth over its face and drag it away. Vaguely, distantly, Soul realized this bothered Maka. She had leaped to her feet; he could feel the vibrations of her boots pounding against leaves and petals as she raced after them.

"Crona – _CRONA!" _

_Damn, I wish she would stop yelling. _

The DEMON snickered at that. The laughter made his head ache.

Wasn't that thing covered in blood? Why did Maka want to protect it so badly?

No time to think about it. The night just got better and better. Snaps and rustles in the forests and his pursuers emerged from the trees. Okay, okay, he needed to think clearly. He had forgotten something very important. He needed to be cool. It was unfortunate that he had no idea what that meant, but still, he needed to be cool. If he could cling onto that one scrap of principal – that one battered, meaningless necessity – if he could just _be cool – _then maybe he could summon the willpower to snip the reel of memories replaying like a bad horror show in his head and focus. That was all. Be cool, be cool, be cool. Whatever that meant. He was cool. The rest of the day fell away from him, tiny bits of rust fluttering from his consciousness to soil and flowers. Forgotten. Clear-headed. Cool. He could focus. He could fight.

Climbing to his feet was more than a hassle. Blood still gushed over his pant-leg, oozing from a gash on his thigh (he couldn't remember where he got it), and the pain from it arced throughout the rest of his body, like a dozen splinters piercing flesh. His limbs were stiff and heavy; they groaned embarrassingly as he moved, his nerves screaming for his mind to let them rest, his brain hollering in return for them to keep moving. His skin was overheated, but slicked in a very chilly sweat; the combination was unsettling, nauseating. His mouth tasted dry and bitter and velvety. Tiny pinpricks of agony needled at his temples and every few seconds his vision dropped back to the ravaged city where Noah's creatures ran amok and total chaos reigned. But he would quash those thoughts in a steely resistance. He needed to be cool. Cool, cool.

He wasn't sure he could count on Maka. She was a BLOODSTONE, definitely, and he knew she could fight, but she might have run after that pink-haired thing. Certainly looked like it. Alright. So he was on his own. Big deal.

If he died, he died cool.

And anything was better than that room with the suicidal angels, that man with his fingers in his hair.

Soul's arm shimmered in its SCYTHE form, clotted with blood.

"Let's see what you got," he murmured, but his voice sounded very faraway to him, and the collision of bodies wiped away all thought.

Grizzled faces, quick swipes, jabs, punches, kicks, RED splashes. His SCYTHE gave him an edge, but his mind kept tipping into waves of dizziness, leaving him vulnerable. Soon enough, his left eye was swollen with bruises and his mouth was bloody. His side ached and his feet barely left the floor as he jostled from side to side, his attacks monotonous, his entire body buzzing with exhaustion. And then something broke the tired ennui of battle – a strange sensation from behind him, another person, a slender back pressed against his own. The smell of lavender and lemongrass.

"Let me use you," Maka's breath in his ear.

Her voice traveled slowly to his brain, a confused garble. It took a while for him to process them.

"Wh – wha – a – at?"

"Let – me – use – you."

Wes. A body hanging on a string. Dad. The piano. A thousand picture frames.

"Use…me…"

What was happening to him?

"_Yes! Soul! Come on – please!" _

Her weight was strong and steady at his back, holding him up. No, wait. He was holding her up too. They were leaning on each other.

"I don't…" _I don't know how to turn into a SCYTHE. _

_/There is a way you can get out of this, you know – a little secret I haven't told you about – / _

A body hanging on a string.

Wes, Wes.

A severed hand.

"_Soul! Please! We can help each other –!" _

A thousand picture frames – what were those faces saying? Those faces in the picture frames. A thousand dead faces.

_Hey – hey – didn't you hear? _

_Don't you know? What happened to the Evans family? _

_They were all murdered, weren't they? _

_Didn't they all die? _

What was – going on?

And then reality lurched back in a way he never expected. There was a thunderous stomp that shook the very foundations of the forest; the crew of men glanced nervously at one another, threw fearful eyes in the direction of the noises; each subsequent footfall was a crash that bowled whole trees like frail stalks of grass. Soul felt the tremendous vibrations quake in his chest. Maka twisted toward the commotion as well, her gaze stricken, her heart palpitating in her torso – he could sense its quick beat as her back pressed against his. Her fingernails cut into his wrist.

"What is that?"

Okay. Where had this girl been all day?

A writhing mass of canine heads reared over the treetops. Their necks were long and scaly, undulating things that looped and coiled and stretched further than natural. The effect was snakelike or dragonish, clashing perversely with the twitching doglike ears and wolfish snouts.

_Where the hell does Noah get these things? _

One look at the beast and the bastards fled. Great. Rather than die a valiant death in combat, he would be shredded to pieces between rotted dog teeth and screechy howls. Significantly less cool.

Soul stepped back and crushed Maka's toe.

"G – go."

She gawked at him. "What?"

How stupid was this girl?

"I can't…go much further," his heart swelled in his throat, pulsing too fast, too fast, "My leg's hurt. I'll slow you down. Just go."

He thought he would have to pry those words from cold lips. He thought his entire body would have collapsed to shivers and tremors, an agonized stitching of heart and muscle and perhaps soul. But instead his mind floated coolly in his skull and the words glided out easily, and suddenly his nerves were no more than a distant tingling in his fingers and toes, his heart was no more important than a ball bouncing against some nearby wall; the demonic reel of memories and the thousand picture frames and the body hanging on a string and Wes and Dad and Mom screaming in her room and a severed hand and Noah's face on a screen all faded to ashes and blew away in a nonexistent wind – and he was left light, light, bodiless – sleeping someplace dim and cool.

So much for survival, huh?

_Haha, haha. _

Wait, wait, this wasn't funny.

_So not cool –! _

"No way!" A hand on his wrist and her voice shattered the calm, "I'm _not _leaving you here!"

"Neither am I."

Soul snapped his gaze around and all sensation flooded back to him. Not everyone had fled. A single man remained, his eyes stone, his jaw set; his face was a picture of madness.

"The others are cowards. I don't care about the beast," his breathing came in sporadic puffs, "If I don't give something to that man – if I don't take you! – he'll kill me anyway! I'm not leaving without you! _I'm not –"_

So tired, so tired. This was so ridiculous. Either way, he'd die.

Why was Maka so stupid? Why wouldn't she get out of here?

His leg was a shaking stilt of flesh and blood and collapsed beneath him. Maka fell with him, gripping his wrist too tightly.

"What do you want Soul for? I won't let you have him!"

The man leered. "Get out of the way, girl."

_Crash, crash. _The thing coming toward them.

"Just…leave…Maka…"

"No."

Trees bowled over as the creature trampled the landscape.

_"I said get out of the way!"_

Too fast, too fast. It all happened too fast.

His mind unwound to senseless threads with no beginning and no end; total exhaustion overtook him; blindness shuttered his eyes, his vision evaporating into a swirl of light and darkness; hearing faded to dim muffled squeaks and thuds, so insignificant that his eardrums could have been muffled in cotton. There was only that smell, the too-familiar smell of lavender and lemongrass, all around him. Locked onto him. Her heart, beating so hard against his. And then a stickiness and wetness bathing his entire body. Something heavy falling against his chest.

_Wait…wait…this isn't…this isn't good… _

He would not pass out. He would not.

_Cool guys don't faint. _

There was a roar and a rattle and a crunching sound and more warmth flooded down from above, a hot rain.

Soul forced his heavy eyelids open and stopped breathing.

So fast, so fast.

The creature had been upon them, but miraculously, unbelievably, it was turning away, its many heads snaking and tugging and looping and colliding with one another, fighting over some RED thing Soul could only guess was his attempted kidnapper. The screams were shrill and faraway and died immediately. The warmth he sensed rain down on him was blood from the corpse, a disturbing scarlet spray that showered him with each twist and snap of the monster's jaws.

But that was not important.

The monster was moving away from them.

The nightmare was Maka.

She lay against him, icy and trembling, her eyes blank. A RED smile grinned across her neck, peeling apart the smooth peach skin, wreathing it in rosy bubbles. Her token for staying with him, the man's last act of revenge before Noah's beast ripped him from this hell of flowers. A swift cut to the throat. She shuddered and suffocated and slid into spasms on a bed of white roses, thrashing among thorns and petals, green eyes rolling. Her chest puffed uselessly and the noises torn from her lips were desperate, unwholesome.

"N – no – no – no –"

Soul placed his fingers by her throat and they came away RED, RED, RED.

"Come on – come on –"

Why had she done this? Why had she done this? He was cold and hot and sick and alive and tired and alert all at once – _and why had she done this?_ Didn't he tell her it made no difference? Hadn't he told her that being a BLOODSTONE would get her killed? Survival, survival. Hadn't he told her to go home? Hadn't he? He thought of a girl crackling with energy and hope, as radiant as the Angel of Judgment, a girl who smelled like lavender and lemongrass; rushing to the aid of people who didn't deserve her _– rushing to his aid_ – and hadn't he told her to _go home?_ He thought of tombstones, morbid and cracked and lonely, and frozen earth patted high over dead bodies, and those stone angels that watched and did nothing, and _Maka, Maka, Maka_, that psycho girl who knew only how to get herself killed – who _did _something – who wanted to live – who was dying – who believed in something – who told him, in a voice made of fire – _"I'm a MEISTER" – _him, him, the POSSESSED boy, the DEMON in his head, and Wes asking for death and dangling like a puppet on violin strings but_ this girl – _

_ Hadn't he told her to go home? _

_ Hadn't he told her? _

What was that – on his face? What was that?

His eyes stung and his hands were bloody and his voice was a rush of sobs, not cool at all.

"C – Come o – on, you ca – can't die. I don't – I don't even _know _you. How can I live if a – stranger dies for me?" He pressed his palms over the smile and it drooled RED and drowned his hands, "Come on – come on, you can make it –" Hadn't he told her? Hadn't he told her to go home? And what could he do? _What could he do? _"Don't die, don't die for me – that's not cool. I'll do anything. Anything."

Maka gasped and bled and did not hear him.

"Anything, anything –"

Was that the DEMON laughing?

Or was it him crying?

_"F – fine! I'll do it! I'll – I'll become your WEAPON! I promise! Just don't die! Don't die! Don't die on me!" _

**A/N:** Just going to say this…if you think the whole Soul-and-Maka-stumbling-across-each-other-in-mysterious-flower-place was _too _convenient – you are absolutely right. It was. There's a reason behind this…I'm hoping that the way it's written makes this place seem at least slightly mysterious… I'm not going to say anything else, but I just wanted acknowledge the weirdness of them all running into each other so easily. Once again…if any of you decided to keep reading…thanks for reading!


	17. GLASS and Gashes and Finest Porcelain?

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _Soul Eater _or _Mockingjay. _Both belong to their respective owners, Atsushi Ohkubo and Suzanne Collins.

**A/N: **Alright, a more standard-sized chapter. As in, not nearly as long as the last chapters. /sweatdrop/ On the other hand, the last chapter took me about four weeks to write, so that's why it's a rambling, never-ending horror. As for this chapter…I'm really excited to be on DTK again, but I feel this writing doesn't do him justice (I never feel like any of his chapters do him justice, honestly). I wrote this chapter under weird circumstances – trying to work around a holiday weekend and my sister's birthday – and I ended up staying up late after a family party and then waking up early the next today to finish it up, so of course I hate it, but I'm never happy with any of my chapters, so…/sighs again/ I mean, I've had certain scenes in my head for AGES - particularly the scene between April and Kid that follows - and I'm just not sure it came out how I always pictured it in my mind. I think its just because Kid is such a headcase (in both the show AND this story, haha).

But I had fun with the dream sequence, as I always seem to like dreams more than the realities in my stories. /headdeskplz/

I just want to take this moment to THANK you guys for sticking with this story and sending me **such** inspiring reviews. You really keep me going! **As always, I'm going to give individual thanks, but as usual I'm pressed for time right now, so I'll later repost the chapter with those comments attached. **

Once again – THANKS! I LOVE ALL YOU GUYS!

* * *

"_The dead. The ones I loved fly as birds in the open sky above me. Soaring, weaving, calling me to join them. I want so badly to follow them, but the seawater saturates my wings, making it impossible to lift them."_

Suzanne Collins, _Mockingjay _

**Chapter Sixteen: **GLASS and Gashes and the Finest White Porcelain?

_A perfect flower. _

_ Behind them, somewhere, the voices echo, a chorus of ghosts: "Kid!" they sing, mystifying, an ethereal interweaving of shouts and laughs and breaths and calls, "Kid! Kid! Come in! Come in!" _

_ Kid. He remembers this. He remembers that title, if it counts as one. So arbitrary, so generic, such a nameless name, Kid. That could be anyone, he could be anyone, anybody's kid – and it suits him, now, in this moment, because he really is no one but a kid in a garden, no more than a small child in a field of blossoms, and when he smiles it is light and bubbly and fills his soul with an airiness that makes him float like the sun that lies in a golden haze around him. _

_ "Kid, Kid," the voices still call, and the sound of them stirs up in a buttery-yellow wind that caresses his cheeks and kisses his eyelids. He lets them call, not knowing what they want. Kid, Kid. But he is someone special, they tell him. He is someone unique. "Kid, Kid!" _

_ A perfect flower. _

_ He stands in a pretty garden made just for him. It's a circle, and he adores circles because once in the center he can walk in any direction and the path will always be symmetrical. Symmetry, a new word, sweet on his tongue. Melts like sugar in a teacup, a warm spot in the center of his chest. He's just learned the word for it, but he's always loved it, a deep and true and natural love for all things that stand balanced and beautiful on either side, making the whole world even, complete. This completeness. The garden is complete, a flawlessly constructed circle with hedges and flowers and trees planted at strategic locations: the lilies on the right shake their drowsing petals to the lilies on the left; the willows on the left creak their snaky wooden boughs to their weeping brethren on the right; and the white roses on the right laughed in their bushes and mirror the perfect square hedges of the left, the sweet slender tree all full of cherry blossoms mimes exactly her sister on the other side, shedding a confetti of pink leaves like enchanted rain. _

_ He stands in the middle of paradise with the cuffs of his trousers carefully tucked up, away from the soil and the things that crawl in it. He kneels and touches the edges of the perfect flower, counts all eight petals, silken and rustling in the light breeze._

_ "Hello, Mr. Flower. I am Kid. I am Death the Kid. I am named after someone very special – Father. Did you know Father is a very special person?" and he leans in and breathes the delicate perfume and feels the slippery softness of the petals at his fingertips; a confidential whisper, "He is very tall and very important and wears a mask and long black clothes that go all curly at the ends. He lets me play with it when I see him, but he never lets me play with his mask." _

_ The voices behind, echoing. "Kid! Kid! Kid!" _

_ He pets the flower with a tiny hand, "Father says he loves me. He's a very special person, you know. He goes away for a very long time and I don't see him very much, but that is because he's doing very important things for other important people," the petals quiver in a luxurious wind that smells of earth and grass and blossoms and honeysuckle; he imagines it shakes for him, cries for him, "Don't be sad, Mr. Flower. Father says he loves me. I thought maybe I would see him today, but he is very busy. He gave me this nice garden instead. And you're in this garden, and you're very pretty because you have eight petals. Won't you be my friend, Mr. Flower? I never had any friends before. I would like to be your friend, Mr. Flower. I am Kid. Death the Kid." _

_ Who is Death the Kid? _

_ What is Death? _

_ And then the footsteps come and he's tangled up in voices and arms and faces of people who work for Father but aren't Father himself. There's a woman here, with hair as thick and rich and gold as honey, and a midnight-colored patch over her eye, and he ducks from her because she always showers his face in too many kisses and it's not dignified, not proper at all. And then there's the man, the one who stands besides Father so often, the one he holds a little black spot in his heart about – because the tall man with hair like a cardinal's feathers gets to be with Father all the time, and he only sees that very special person with the curly black clothes and not-allowed-to-be-touched mask in brief snatches, sometimes in sneak-peeks in mirrors or diamond-hard glass._

_ "I want to stay here," he informs them, but the take him away, and then the dream changes. _

_ The air is dark and cool and smells like summer twilight, and there are streamers everywhere, half-twisted paper things that hang between turrets and windows and lofty tree branches, and a thousand candles aflame and shining regally, and a million crystal glasses shimmering on outside tables, rich with amber liquid, and the sky above a brilliant burst and shock of fireworks, an explosive array of raw color, blue and white and green and RED, a billion little sparks of light that blaze then flicker and curl and die to smoky nothingness before they rain to the ground. _

_ He sits by the window because he is too small for parties even though they say he's special. _

_ The fireworks splatter hue against the casement like blood and rotten fruit. _

_ And then the dream changes again. _

_ He sees the world die. _

_ What is a SHINIGAMI? _

_ "Kid! Kid!" The voices echo again, but this time they are a chorus of ghouls, the sky above slashed scarlet and scabbed black, and his garden is nothing but a blasted circle. No flowers, all gray. Up and down, up and down, on someone's shoulder, wriggling and screaming, but the air tastes like poison so he closes his mouth and tries not to breathe. Showers of dust that rise up like wraiths with each subsequent footfall. He must not breathe. There is a RED light in his eyes, in everyone's eyes, a lurid haze that passes around him but kills everything it touches, transforming splendid homes to tarnished relics, collapsing huge structures of glass and marble, sparkling tumbles that cry like broken spirits, scarring and moldering and clotting filth in the grandiose spectacle that is his home, a school. All the candles snuff out. The streets are slick and wet with blood. People scream, a shrill sound. In his head a blankness spreads over, like it's stuffed with quiet white fabric. The cry for Father dies on his lips, because Father is a very important person, and Father is a stranger wrapped up in midnight funeral shrouds and skeleton masks, and he doesn't know Father, and Father probably does not really love him, anyway. And he doesn't really know who he is either. Kid. A nameless name, but he's too young to think like that. _

_ "Kid! Kid!" _

_ Falling. _

_He sees blood and blackness and pain and a dancing massacre. _

_He sees a face with serpent eyes, a smile that dangles charming over him. Eyes that are a thousand years old. Eyes that do not dream dreams, but nightmares that are real. _

_Wait. Stop. Pause. Rewind. _

_Repeat._

_Repeat. _

_Play it again, like a video. Like a reel of film. _

_How'd he get here? What was going on? _

_Play it again, again. _

_Stop. Rewind. Repeat. _

_A perfect flower. Somewhere. In a garden. _

_Go back – back – back – _

_But he can't possibly go back because he can't possibly remember his name._

* * *

When Death the Kid awoke, it was not to roses and silk cushions, but silence and a blank chamber.

He tried to grasp the dream, but it was already fading, leaving an imprint of blood and faery-dust on his mind. He had been saying something in it, repeating something that might have been considered important in the many absurd yesterdays that was childhood. Back when he would speak. Before the long slimy tunnels and the rickety wooden stage with its audience of squealing rats and lecherous criminals, its performers consisting of grimy-fingered hawkers and man-sized birdcages made of black iron and shackled chairs like some sort of inverted throne. Before the deadness settled quiet and cold in him, the chilly porcelain stillness that both stole and saved his life.

_I am Kid. I am Death the Kid. _

But who was that?

In his hollowness, the question stirred.

He did not speak anymore. He did not do much of anything, anymore. He was surprised that memory still existed in the frozen darkness of his subconscious. The dream was smudged vague and golden, but still it was there, a sputtering candle in the night. He could see the garden, though it was blurred, half-remembered, half-imagined; he could see that tiny quivering blossom, its perfect eight petals; he could hear his own voice, high and prepubescent:

_I am Kid. I am Death the Kid. _

The voice haunted him. Harrowingly, the little boy said it, repeated it, again and again, until echoes overlapped echoes and a whole crescendo of names rang in his ears. And he was dead and still, barely moving.

Who are you? Who are you? The voice and the dream and the memory seemed to ask, beneath the jumbled repeats of _I am – I am – I am_ – the question rose snakelike and slithered over the emptiness that was his soul, devouring it: Who are you? Who are you? Who are you? Like shouts on a mountain, ringing and cascading: Who are you? Who are you? Like a lone whisper in a dark cave: What are you? What are you? What are you?

_Something broken._

The answer was a wisp, a hollow rattling of thought, barely there at all. He did not have the energy to speak it, but still it lingered there over his lips like a phantom of breath. He was no one, nothing. He was a doll. He remembered without effort the stitched smiles of teddy bears sitting all around Miss Tara's tea parties; he remembered shiny button stares, tiny heart-shaped heads made of plastic, blank glass eyes that watch forever and painted lips fixed in pleasant arches when she slit his skin over lace tablecloths. He was like that. Like them. If you cut him, he would not bleed, not really; he would fall to dust and plaster, weak old china; you would find nothing inside him, nothing, nothing, only a bit of broken porcelain and an echo of a whisper – _I am Kid. I am Death the Kid. _

And maybe you would bury him, the shattered remnants of a doll. Maybe you'd think enough to topple his pieces into a ditch somewhere – (an act too kind, really) – and even though he would be dead, he would be alive too, because something that's not alive can never truly die, and his grave would be a hollow in the earth, a blasted garden where a little boy lies, a carcass of a death god dreaming of eight-petaled flowers and skeleton masks.

Was this feeling? Was he feeling something? A tightness in his throat, a noose around his neck; he couldn't breathe. He lay there on a strange surface in a strange room and he did not breathe and he did not think and so he did not react.

They put him someplace clean and bare. It was an accidental mercy, certainly, but a mercy nonetheless. The monotonous walls rose up brown and comforting on all sides, completely identical, a balm on jagged nerves. The floor was a consistent gray, unbroken by cracks or fissures, a solid ice-cold slab of stone that stretched from one end of the room to the next.

Other than that, the room was empty. The _wretched Thing _that brought him left a puddle of blankets in a corner, and in his spare time Kid took to folding them, admiring the neat, careful creases he made in the fabric, perfect stacked squares. The motion was thoughtless, instinctive, something that existed deep within the vacant confines of his body, like a doll on strings.

He was kidnapped often. The BLACK MARKET expected it. He would sit on a chair entwined with dead roses or in a wrought-iron cage stuffed with rotted silks, and some rich faceless person would see him and love him and snatch him away from his leering hawkers. Then he was subjected to an assortment of horrors, all unique in their own ways: a madman made him the centerpiece of occult rituals, slicing his skin and forcing him to drink his own blood; a woman in ruffled dresses used to drag him across an old ballroom in some strange dance, the walls covered in mirrors, call him her pretty boy and then beat him the next day; a family that always dressed in identical satins would place him in labyrinths of filth and watch as he screamed and struggled and sobbed into the debris, a pitiful manacled thing, unable to fix the asymmetry he saw all around him. There were many others, all a blur of whips and dirt and smiles and blood and kisses and other things. There was Miss Tara and her tea parties, and her mother and her drawling laugh, and then there was Noah and his eyes in the dark and his breath tickling the nape of Death the Kid's neck.

Something clotted in his throat, a gob of nausea. The room shuttered for an instance, a sudden darkness; a crawling sensation soaked his skin, wriggled into his core.

Then he realized his eyes were closed.

He opened them.

Death the Kid never tried to escape. What did he have to run to? Golden-smudged memories that might not be real: a lofty bedroom higher than the clouds, long since withered to tarnish; a perfect round Eden decayed to a blasted heathen circle; the blown-away ashes of an eight-petaled buttercup, possibly dreamed-up; and the haunted phantom of a no-show father in a skeleton façade. He moved vaguely among these half-remembered things and wondered their reality, pushed past their screaming nightmares and doubted the names they called, the secrets they whispered in his mind. He did not understand memories and dreams, and certainly if he ran to reveries they would turn to rust beneath his feet, and he would fall through its corroded floor into a pit of madness.

And long ago they told him what he was, while he stood shivering in the shadows of a stage – waiting for the curtain to rise. He stood there, young and fresh, all done up in a fine ebony suit and silk bowtie, and his hair combed down smoothly, and his skin scrubbed milk-white, and they told him he was a doll, frail and small and pretty. They told him he was a doll and he remembered the sharpness of the seller's nails cutting into his shoulder and the raucous screech of the buyers stampeding toward him and the disturbing cracks of the stage and the cobwebs in the curtains and the hot bitter lash of the whip when he said get away, get away, get away, and it was all so solid and so very _real, _and it the golden-smudged dreams fell to useless glitter and a nothingness took over and he knew what they told him was true.

Death the Kid was a doll.

So he was not necessarily disturbed about the kidnap.

Oh no, no, no. It was not the kidnap that bothered him.

_It was that THING. _

He did not have words to describe it, a monster foul enough to stir the horrors in the cold porcelain of a doll.

He did not have words to describe it: a monster foul enough to stir the horrors in the cold porcelain of a doll. Ogress, fiend, demon, nightmare, monstrosity, devil – a patchwork of pure terrors – a disfigured stitching of human flesh – a mismatched assortment too disgusting to fathom; two nauseatingly disjointed eyes, a crop of dreadfully dual-colored hair, horrific spikes jutting hideously on _one side of its face, _the other half mutilated by a bulging black mole. It was as though someone had sewn two different people together, as if a mad scientist reached into a depraved mind and yanked forth the epitome of asymmetry and unleashed it onto reality – took a needle and purposely matched two uneven sides in some hellish, grotesque, wicked intent!

And it…had…_touched him. _

A blood-flavored vomit shoved up his trachea, blocking his airway.

Okay, okay. It was fine. Dolls did not need to breathe.

But he could not look at it. He could not suffer that again.

It – (or she? He thought it might be female) – brought him to this place with the heavy coils of the chain still wrapped around his shoulders. She had not been clever enough to pick the padlock at his throat, so instead she simply bashed away at the spot in the wall where his leash melted into wood until the entire structure fell free. Then she must have scooped him up and made away with him, but thankfully a blackness had invaded his mind and he tumbled into oblivion before her crude grasp sent him into throes of panic.

He woke up sometime later in the plain room. A girl with a pinched, hungry face and a swath of brown hair fiddled with the padlock at his throat until it clicked open and crashed to the floor like a leaden heart. He remembered the quick way her fingers moved, fox-like over the lock; the upturned eyes that stared at him foully. He did nothing as she freed the weight from his neck, though those few times when her calloused touch accidentally collided with his skin caused a clang of disgust deep inside him.

A boy entered the room to collect her when she was done. He called her Jacqueline.

And he was alone again.

Until now. Presently, a door swung open on shrilling hinges and a nightmare stepped into the room.

_Don't move. Don't breathe. Don't look. _

But a doll's eyes are made of glass, still and unblinking, a forced stare that cannot be broken until some masterful hand brushes it shut.

She tromped into the room with a bowl full of greasy liquid. Vacant, vacant, soulless as a doll, but still Death the Kid felt her wretchedness claw over his brain, the taste of total repulsion pervade his tongue.

"Here."

There was a clatter as she dropped the bowl to the floor, its contents sloshing.

"Food. Eat it."

Something frail and pretty, meant only to sit stiff on a throne of flowers, dressed and petted by others. He sat now, white jaw clenched, his eyes like dim glossless suns that lay sunken in his sockets, his mind full of cobwebs. And somewhere behind it all a horror, an unspeakable fear, a revulsion that welled up and twisted and rattled the emptiness inside of him. Think of something else. Anything else. Look at something else. The walls, all even on either side, perfect symmetry. The staid sameness of the floor beneath him. Just don't look at the thing in front of you, just pretend it isn't there. The number eight. A little buttercup with eight petals, quivering in the breeze. Shivering for him. Mr. Flower, in a garden shaped like a circle, and once in the center you could walk in any direction and the path would be symmetrical. Symmetrical. Symmetry. Symmetry.

There were three stripes in his hair and they had nothing to do with symmetry.

_Oh god s–!_

He was as blasphemous as the _thing _before him.

'So beautiful,' Noah used to murmur, cinnamon fingers buried in black hair, his voice a balmy breath, 'So beautiful…so _perfect.'_

He wanted to die.

The embodiment of asymmetry turned on her heel, leaving the food about a foot in front of him.

Death the Kid stared at it and did nothing.

She came back about an hour later and he still sat there, drooped on the ground, looking past the grease and the bowl and existence.

"Hey!"

Her voice cut through his hollowness and reeled him back from the dead void where he slept, thoughtless and uncaring, a porcelain thing without a soul. No, no. Her voice _sawed_ through him and her face _brutalized _him yet again, panoply of horrors, sickening enough to crush air from lungs that should not breathe because he was a doll and dolls did not live, do not live, _do not live – _

_{But a SHINIGAMI is a doll that BREATHES and MOVES and TALKS!}_

Asymmetry took a step forward and nudged the bowl with her foot. Okay. He could look at her foot. The shoe was filthy, scabbed in muck and dirt and blood, and that would make him nauseous, but its filth stained it a congruous brown hue.

"You didn't eat."

Silence.

"You _have _to f—king eat."

That shoe was pretty symmetrical in relation to the rest of her body.

"If you don't, you'll die."

He wanted to die.

She left him again, and the wet slops in the crude bowl, but he did not touch it. He could already tell what sort of kidnappers they were – they certainly did not want to keep him for themselves. He could tell in their actions, in the careless way they threw him in this sparse chamber, rather than deck him out in fastidious costume and arrange him on a feathery shrine. There were no jewels or flowers or silks or cushions. No. They were merely harboring him because he was a COLLECTOR'S ITEM, intent on feeding him so he did not return to the BLACK MARKET as a spoiled good.

Death the Kid stared at the even creases in the folded blankets and fell back into dust and cobwebs and the stillness of porcelain marionettes.

And what – what _is _a SHINIGAMI, really?

What _is _Death?

Asymmetry returned sooner this time. A half hour. Why does she keep coming back? Why must she torture him so?

_Why can't he just die? _

"You _still _didn't f—king eat!" she grumbled and kicked the bowl nearer to him and he sat motionless, like a pretty plaything. He heard her without wanting too, "You know – see if I f—king care! _Die! _No f—king skin off my nose."

It was appropriate that Asymmetry would have such grotesque language.

Fifteen minutes. She was back. Somewhere, somewhere, a demon in a skull mask jeered at him, laughed a silly laugh while the essence of his fear stalked over the threshold and surveyed him with hideous mismatched eyes.

"I told you I don't f—king care if you die or not. I mean it."

She walked out.

Ten minutes passed.

The bowl was untouched.

She returned, foot in the doorway. "I mean it!"

She left.

Five minutes.

"You're gonna f—king die."

He thought about dying, about white porcelain bits tipped into a ditch that was a blasted garden. In a hole with a lonely little boy that talked to flowers and had a very important father and a room higher than the clouds and heaven – and you know what? That little boy might not have been real at all, a memory constructed from faery-dust, an insidious thing spun on a spider's web, an imaginary carcass of an imaginary boy, faded to imaginary ashes.

But how the dirt would close over him. Then he would not have to see her disgusting asymmetry.

Gone again.

This time she only turned on her heel before returning.

"You really will!"

Was this some disturbed nightmare?

"What the f—k's wrong with you?"

_I'm broken. _

And then something truly horrific happened. Asymmetry scowled and stooped and lifted the bowl and a wave of total panic disintegrated his consciousness into buzzing spots of color. Because Asymmetry pulled a wooden spoon from her pocket and plunged it into the bowl and then shoved the barely edible grease between his lips.

_He would die – he would die – he would DIE –!_

He was already dead.

_{but how does something that never lives die?}_

"This is the last f—king time I force-feed you –"

Oh gods! Oh gods! Gods! Gods! And what _were_ gods anyway? Was there not a pretty little nursery rhyme about SHINIGAMI and did not say that they were pivotal pretty things that sat in polished palaces and precede life and death with a toss of the hand? And wasn't that foolish? Wasn't that a massacre of truths? Didn't he sit here, as he sat in thousands of rooms before thousands of horrors, a pale and princely and useless thing with blood welling in the back of his throat and fire burning at the dull golden gems of his eyes and every nerve in the vacant brain of a doll screaming at the knowledge of this asymmetry, right here, right here, _right here –? _

'So lovely,' Noah used to whisper. 'So fine.'

The grease slid down his throat and his vision flickered.

_Symmetry…symmetry…symmetry…? _

What did it matter? What did any of it matter?

If only he could find symmetry.

"Oh shit –"

He did not feel the blood leak over his white lips.

"How easy is it to f—cking break you?"

_How easy is it to break you? How easy is it to break you?_ a mantra, a song, a running chorus slipping through his mind, a rickety, unhinged tune, _How easy is it to break you? How EASY is it to BREAK you? _

_ 'BREAK, BREAK, BREAK!' _a boy once said that, a boy he once knew, in an attic somewhere with rose petals strewn across the floor and cobwebs in his mind and the boy had a symmetrical design on his vest and a mad look in amethyst eyes, and he had a blade clutched not-so-coyly in his hand, and he was digging its smooth kiss into Death the Kid's cheek, drawing ugly RED lines on one side, one side, _only one side of his face – _

But wasn't he already broken?

'Precious,' Noah used to breathe, like a spice rolling off his tongue, infecting him; 'So precious.'

_If only he could find symmetry._

* * *

The world must have darkened.

He must have fallen into a sleepy oblivion again, because now the shadows recede and his mind returns to a swift and painful clarity. The chamber around him was a blur of dull colors and the back of his throat sandpapered, the taste in his mouth heavy and glue-like. He can already tell from the stiffness of his limbs and the prickling behind his eyes that a faint had snatched him from reality, and it's with a languid air that he returns to this nightmarish realm that was his life, a mechanical flick of dusty white lids, a revealing of bejeweled eyes beneath.

And he realized he was not alone.

It wasn't Asymmetry who stared down at him, thankfully. But it was clearly someone who thought himself the height of fear, the very pinnacle of terror and madness. A boy around the same age as himself, clad in ragged clothing, his skull dominated by spiked tufts of blue hair, culminating in a massive point at the center of his head. Pretty symmetrical, so Death the Kid didn't bother himself much with feeling much alarm.

A boy around the same age as himself, clad in ragged clothing, his head a spiked fortress of blue hair, all culminating in a massive point in the center. The look was pretty symmetrical, so Death the Kid did not rouse the dust motes inside his porcelain self into a frenzy. No panic punctured the stillness that was a lovely glass doll, even when the figure above bore down on him with blood in his eyes, his mouth a wiry rip of a smile.

Did he think he might perhaps shake? Did he think might squirm underneath the heaviness of that gaze, like a worm beneath a boot?

Death the Kid rolled china-fine eyes away from him in apathy.

There was a disgruntled sound. Two calloused hands gripped his collar – it was still the loose, unbuttoned collar he donned at Noah's mansion; his wardrobe still the slippery RED clothes that man swaddled him in – and slammed him into the wall behind him with enough force that paint and stone crumbled into a crater, a neat sprinkling of dust rained from the ceiling and painted sable locks a ghost-whiteness.

But he was limp in the stranger's grasp, a fragile thing often manhandled by a multitude of hands. Huge hands swelled with fat and encrusted with rings, small hands skinny as bones and sharp as pinchers, hands with cracked fingernails and sweaty palms that made him fall into himself, hands that were cold and tough as ice, and hands that skittered over him like the creep of a spider, soft and insidious as the brush of insect legs, possessive and violating touches that caress his cheek, his hair, his lips –

The room crumpled at its corners, a dark, blurry place.

In that brief second, Death the Kid thought himself bestrewn with lovers' petals again – choked in the blood-colored leaves of roses – and he sensed the hot breath of his owner at his neck, and inside him was nothing, nothing, the haunted vacancy of a doll, a groomed marionette made of glass and gems and hollowness.

'Lovely,' the lips would speak, while he sat in perfect stillness, 'So lovely.'

"So – you're the SHINIGAMI, huh?"

Half his consciousness returned, eying dully the boy before him, looking past dimness and quietness and chilliness and not caring what he saw. The words were guttural, a growl that assaulted lily-white ears, but Death the Kid was an unstrung puppet in a murderer's hands and his delicate eyes tilted daintily at the threat.

And – what _was_ a SHINIGAMI, anyway?

What _was_ Death?

_I am Kid. I am Death the Kid. _

And he was borne into nothingness, and didn't much care who that was.

_"Look at me!" _the boy shook him, clamped dagger-like fingers into frail and slender shoulders, but he slumped there like a listless plaything, dead, dead, DEAD. He watched imaginary dust motes float past his golden gaze as his tormentor screamed in his face: _"How dare you ignore the great Black*Star? How dare you not tremble in fear!" _Something weighty as a boulder hit his midriff, and Death the Kid doubled into himself like a doll sewn from velvet, a glitter of scarlet on porcelain lips and lifelessness in dreary yellow eyes: _"Don't you know who I am? Don't you know what's about to happen to you?" _

He leaned there, cradled in craters, not watching him.

The boy called Black*Star clutched a hand at his throat and the white flesh burned beneath the touch.

"I'm gonna fight you. And win."

No, no. That wasn't right at all. He was not a toy soldier, not a creaky, oily little mannequin that could be cranked with a key into a suicide march with a flailing paper sword. He was nothing, nothingness. He was hollowness. They told him he was a doll, long ago; they told him to sit pretty and not smile and be still as they showered him in flowers and thorns and perfume and bloody kisses.

"So – fight – _BACK!"_

A strong arm flung him across the room and he landed hard, bruises like blue roses blooming in the snow.

"FIGHT BACK!"

The sable hair was gripped, jerked back so lightless eyes fell to his face. He saw a demon with stars devouring his pupils. But Death the Kid was nothing, nothingness. He was hollowness. He was porcelain in an oversized birdcage, stuffed with rotten silks. He could not move, he could not act.

"Is this the great SHINIGAMI? The _gods _of this world?"

Gods fell to dust and ashes and slipped through the fissures in a BLACK MARKET in his brain.

"Lemme tell you something," and a hand grabbed his jaw, twisted it left and right, and it was grimy and filthy-nailed and calloused as a hawker, but then it was all wrong, all wrong, all wrong, because he was a china doll, not a toy soldier, "I'm the _Big Man_ – and you can't look at me with those eyes, bastard. I'll tear you to pieces. I'll show you what it's like to be afraid. You think you're bigger, don't you? That's why you won't fight back? _That's why you keep looking at me with those stupid eyes? You're the smallest thing I've ever seen! I'll kill you! I'll KILL YOU!" _

He could have cracked to pretty splinters in that grasp.

All wrong, all wrong, all wrong.

Didn't he know he was a doll? Didn't he know he was silk and black satin and fine glass and pointless golden-smudged memories that dissipated into glitter and then nothingness? Didn't he know all he could do was sit still still and beautiful in a wreathe of roses on a stage writhing with rats, while the eyes cascaded over him, while the fingers touched him, while the seller shrieked his prices and the buyers dripped their lascivious smiles all over him? Didn't he know he was hollow? Didn't he know he was dust and stiffness and painted loveliness in a dark room, that he was blood and a knife and a wound cutting asymmetrical grins into his cheek, that rich men murmured luxurious sins into his ears and he was a silent victim as the world broke apart into a million pieces because a doll has no soul and no mind and no body? Didn't he know he was dead, dead, DEAD? Didn't he know he was never ALIVE? Didn't he know what a SHINIGAMI was?

_Didn't he know what a SHINIGAMI was? _

"Yo – _hey, Black*Star. _What the f—k are you doing? What are you doing with him?"

_ A SHINIGAMI was – a SHINIGAMI was – _

"I'm gonna kill it. I'm gonna kill it and show Mifune I can surpass gods."

_A DOLL! _

_ A DOLL! _

_ A DOLL!_

Stitched smiles and button stares and glass eyes at a tea party.

"Black*Star –"

There was a shiver in his core and a shaky black film over his eyes and he couldn't see Asymmetry.

_Thank you, thank you, thank you, _he whispered to an imaginary god in a skeleton façade in a rosy-hazed memory that was probably a dream, _Thank you, thank you, thank you. _

"_Shut up, April! _Or I'll kill _you _too!"

The hand at his throat was a noose that throttled blue-purple flowers in snow.

"But if you kill him – _it _now – it won't prove anything. It's not at full strength. Anyone could beat down a shell of a god. Don't you wanna fight the real thing?"

The hand loosened and breath slowly crawled into his lungs.

"…of course I'm gonna fight the real thing, April."

All wrong, all wrong, all wrong.

"Then leave it for now. Let it get stronger. Prove that at full power a SHINIGAMI is nothing compared to you."

He saw stars. They roved over him, a brutal constellation, sizing up the thinness of his paper limbs in RED silk clothes, the frailness in a parted mouth that bled scarlet beads. Then he was falling, a tumble of porcelain onto the floor or maybe even into a ditch where a little boy who talked to flowers might lay, blue-lipped and decomposing. And a whole galaxy seemed to burst overhead as pale lids dropped over glass-golden eyes and a foot jived into his midsection and a very different whisper scratched in the darkness of his mind:

_"Get stronger, SHINIGAMI. Get stronger so I can kill you." _

But Death the Kid did not understand, and as he descended through airless galaxies and murderous stars and blasted ditches and imaginary little boys who talk to flowers and an ancient stage where a single chair sat, showered in roses like a throne and wretched Asymmetry held him captive and murmurs in night crawled all over his flesh, his brain could only repeat the same line, over and over again:

_All wrong, all wrong, all wrong. _


End file.
